What it takes to win the Derby and the best of the 2021 contenders
Timeform’s John Ingles outlines what it takes to win a Derby and which of this year’s contenders have the strongest credentials.
‘Aidan O’Brien wins Derby with son of Galileo’ – in some ways, there was something reassuringly familiar about the result of last year’s Derby.
After all, it was a record eighth win in the race for Serpentine’s trainer and a fifth for his sire, which is also a record. But in other respects Serpentine was anything but a typical winner of what was anything but a typical Derby.
He opened up a clear lead under Emmet McNamara which soon proved an unassailable one, providing his jockey with one of just three winners he rode all year. 25/1 winner Serpentine had won a maiden at the Curragh on his previous start – just seven days earlier – while the placed horses were sent off at even bigger prices, with Khalifa Sat and Amhran Na Bhfiann next home at 50/1 and 66/1.
The latter, Serpentine’s stablemate, had finished thirteenth and fourth on his only two starts in maidens beforehand. And all of this was played out on a strangely deserted Epsom Downs on the first Saturday of July, not June, after the traditional calendar of the classics and their attendant trials had been thrown into disarray.
Strictly on Timeform ratings, Serpentine would have been entitled to start at still longer odds. His rating of 101p, whilst above average for a maiden winner, ranked him fourteenth of the sixteen runners in last year’s Derby judged purely on form shown beforehand.
The third was one of only two who had achieved less. A look at the table below shows that Serpentine’s form was more than a stone below the level reached by most Derby winners when turning up at Epsom. In the last ten years, the average Derby winner has achieved a rating of 117 going into the race but if we strip out Serpentine who skews that figure, an average of 119 is the sort of form we’d normally expect a Derby winner to bring to Epsom. Anything much below that figure would therefore require a horse to show above average improvement, which Serpentine clearly did.
But a figure of 119 won’t win you a Derby, or at least it will be a very poor renewal if it does. An average Derby winner from the last decade has run to a rating of between 125 and 126 in winning at Epsom, therefore improving, on average, 6/7 lb on prior form.
That improvement is only to be expected given that for the most part it’s a race for colts still developing physically, still learning their job and, in many cases, being brought along to peak on that specific date. The other main reason for Derby winners stepping up on previous form (or, for the non-stayers, failing to match it) is that the majority of runners are trying a mile and a half for the first time.
Eight of the last ten Derby winners – Serpentine included - had a ‘p’ attached to their rating indicating that they were considered open to improvement. The two exceptions were Masar and Anthony Van Dyck, both of whom had already run eight times before the Derby which is about twice the average (4.3) for recent Derby winners.
Consequently, both won the Derby making below-average improvement on prior form, Masar improving his rating by just 2 lb, though he didn’t need to progress by very much given that he already had achieved a figure of 123 going into the race. That rating, incidentally, came from his nine-length win in the Craven Stakes.
More typical Derby winners these days have raced only three or four times before going to Epsom. Ruler of The World got away with just two starts beforehand, winning both, including one of the main trials, the Chester Vase. Unlike the others in the table, he had not raced as a two-year-old.
With just three runs before going to Epsom, Serpentine was in good company as that was the same number of starts as Harzand, Golden Horn and Camelot, three of the best Derby winners of the last decade. Golden Horn had the highest rating of any recent Derby winner going into the race – he ran to 125 in winning the Dante, which, as we’ve seen, is already form good enough to win an average Derby.
But making average improvement, Golden Horn came away from Epsom as the best winner of the last ten years with a rating of 132. By the end of 2015 he had taken his rating to 134 after further wins in the Eclipse, Irish Champion Stakes and Arc.
So how do this year’s Derby contenders measure up after the main trials have been run?
Bolshoi Ballet is now a short-priced favourite – no bigger than 7/4 – but justifiably so given that his rating of 122p gives him above average pre-Derby form. That figure comes from his impressive six-length victory in the Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial and followed his course-and-distance win in the Ballysax. Three consecutive Derby winners – Sinndar, Bolshoi Ballet’s sire Galileo, and High Chaparral all took the Ballysax-Derrinstown route to Epsom at the beginning of the century (Sinndar was narrowly beaten under a penalty in the Ballysax) and while no Derby winner has won the Derrinstown lately, Harzand won the Ballysax prior to his Derby win in 2016. With five runs under his belt Bolshoi Ballet has the right combination of experience and potential for the Derby, not to mention a pedigree which suggests he’ll relish a mile and a half – he looks a speedier version of the best of his brothers Southern France, who was third in the St Leger.
He's up against an above-average contender but Godolphin’s Hurricane Lane meets all the criteria for a potential Derby winner and offers more value at 6/1 or a bit bigger in some places. His rating of 119p is bang on standard for a potential Derby winner, given further average improvement, while he has the ‘Golden Horn’ profile of being a Dante winner who is unbeaten in three starts. The way he finished strongly at York suggests a mile and a half will suit Hurricane Lane and his breeding backs that up as he’s by Frankel out of a useful mare who won at up to two miles.
Frankel is also the sire of Mohaafeth whose rating of 118p is the right sort of launchpad to go close at Epsom. He has taken a less orthodox route for William Haggas than either Bolshoi Ballet or Hurricane Lane – he won a handicap at the Craven meeting from a mark of 85 - though he proved himself much better than a handicapper when following up in the listed Newmarket Stakes last time with ridiculous ease. Mohaafeth has had five races so is still lightly raced enough to have further improvement in him and, with his smart dam a daughter of Derby winner Sea The Stars, he’s another bred to appreciate the extra couple of furlongs.
Other trial winners Third Realm (114p, Lingfield Derby Trial), Youth Spirit (113p, Chester Vase) and John Leeper (113p, Fairway Stakes) have a bit more improvement to find, the last-named perhaps having the most longer-term potential of that trio, certainly if his breeding is any guide (another by Frankel, out of high-class Oaks winner Snow Fairy), though in his case three runs might not be sufficient experience for Epsom for one who still seems to be learning his job.
But according to the betting Bolshoi Ballet’s biggest danger is his own stable-companion High Definition (115p), the colt he replaced at the head of the ante-post market. High Definition is another, therefore, with a bit more improvement to find but the market may well be right in anticipating that he’ll make more than normal progress from his staying-on third, two lengths behind Hurricane Lane, in the Dante.
That was plan B for High Definition who had been scheduled for the Lingfield trial instead, while his pedigree and his physique are other pointers to him developing into a high-class colt over at least a mile and a half sooner or later. Whether Epsom is the right time, and place, for that to happen remains to be seen but with the Ballydoyle squad headed by Bolshoi Ballet, like last year, it could well be another case of ‘Aidan O’Brien wins Derby with son of Galileo.’