Kentucky Derby Post Positions will be randomly assigned Saturday evening (4/26) at Churchill Downs.
The luck of the draw is just that when you have a race with twenty horses entered. But the Post Position draw and its impact on the race seems to be far from arbitrary.
To the uninitiated, the inside posts might seem favorable since racing near the rail is the shortest way around a racetrack.
This theory might hold water in races with fields of 10 or fewer horses, but in the Kentucky Derby, there are as many as 20 racehorses jumping out of the gate scrambling to secure position before the field heads into the first turn.
This means there’s a lot of bumping and jostling as the field compresses to the inside of the racetrack.
And that means the horses already on the inside are going to get the worst of it, which can discourage them or negatively affect their positioning.
Horses on the outside are typically subject to less bumping, but if they don’t make it across the track before the first turn, they can be left racing very wide.
In the Kentucky Derby, the turns account more than 40% of the 1 ¼-mile race.
Assuming the width needed for a racehorse and rider is four feet, for every path off the rail, a horse runs more than 25 feet farther.
A horse six paths off the rail on both turns will run 150 feet farther than a horse on the rail, making their race that much more challenging.
It’s important to find a balance between racing far enough inside to save ground and far enough outside that a horse can easily maneuver to be in the clear when the real running starts- the homestretch.
So, what is the ideal Post Position? It’s generally believed that somewhere in the middle of the gate, positions 5-15, is best.
In recent years, though, there seems to be a trend toward outside posts having more success, due in part to the crowded fields of the last couple of decades.
Since and including 2000, 12 of the 25 Kentucky Derby Winners have broken from gate 13 or higher.
Confirmation of this trend toward outside posts comes when you look at inside post success (or lack thereof). No horse has Won the Kentucky Derby from gate #1 since FERDINAND in 1986.
Only three horses have Won from the three inside posts since 1986, and all broke from post 3: ALYSHEBA in 1987; REAL QUIET in 1998, (who came up a nose shy of Winning the Triple Crown) and last year’s Winner MYSTIK DAN, who saved ground early on and had just enough to hold off two challengers late and Win by a nose over SIERRA LEONE, who ran out of gate #2.
Prior to 1987, only 19 of 174 horses that left those gates (1-2-3) Won the race, giving the gates a 10.9%-Win rate.
Since and including 1987, the Win rate for posts 1, 2, or 3 is just 2.6% (3-for-114), improved slightly by last year’s MYSTIK DAN Victory.
Some other compelling Post-Position stats include a 10.5%-Win rate for gate 5, which was the Post Position of both 2017 Winner ALWAYS DREAMING and 2014 Winner CALIFORNIA CHROME.
The five hole has produced the most Derby Winners in the race’s history with ten.
Gate #10 has also produced a high rate of Winners at 10.2%, with horses finishing in the money at a remarkable 29.5%.
The last Derby Winner to come from gate 10 was GIACOMO (2005), who was also that last gray horse to Win the Run for the Roses.
Gate #8 is tied with Post-Position 10 as the second most productive in Derby history with nine total Winners.
No horse has ever Won from Post-Position #17 and the last time gate 17 produced a horse that even finished in the top five was 2005.
The more you know…
