Four years ago, a disqualification handed jockey Flavien Prat his first Kentucky Derby win. Two years later, the same thing happened for trainer Brad Cox.
(Bloomberg) — Four years ago, a disqualification handed jockey Flavien Prat his first Kentucky Derby win. Two years later, the same thing happened for trainer Brad Cox.
The victories — just the second and third by disqualification in the race’s 148-year history — could only have been so satisfying. First-by-DQ isn’t exactly the way you dream of winning the Derby.
On Saturday, I’m betting Cox and Prat, two of the brightest young stars in the game, break into the Derby winner’s circle the old-fashioned way, with their horse, Angel of Empire, hitting the finish line first.
The two men don’t team up that often.Â
Cox usually taps another Frenchman, Florent Geroux, to pilot his top horses but Prat, a patient rider with a good clock in his head, is well suited to handle Angel of Empire, a come-from-behind type that will need to navigate his way through the pack. (Geroux will ride another Cox trainee in the Derby — the longshot Jace’s Road.)
Truth is I didn’t make much of Angel of Empire until very recently. Yes, he had run second in a stakes race in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on New Year’s Day and, yes, he then followed that up with a win in New Orleans a month later, but those races were pretty blah. He just grinded away and slowly wore down his rivals. There was nothing flashy to him.
When he showed back up in Hot Springs for the Arkansas Derby in early April, though, he looked like a different animal. He glided into contention approaching the far turn, loomed menacingly while in cruise control and then, when asked by Prat, swallowed up the leaders in a rush as they entered the stretch. Since arriving in Louisville days later, he’s been turning heads with his morning workouts and gallops.Â
Maybe he’s ultimately not the most talented colt in this crop of three-year-olds, but he feels like the now horse — the one that’s peaking at just the right time.
And at odds of 8-1 or so, he should offer good value. I’ll bet him to win and play him in exotic wagers with a long shot I like a lot: Mage. (The other outsider I was looking to bet on, Skinner, was scratched from the race this morning after spiking a fever.) Mage has some bad habits to overcome — like breaking slowly out of the starting gate, an absolute killer in the crowded Derby field — but has lots of ability.
(David Papadopoulos, an executive editor at Bloomberg News, is a voter in the thoroughbred industry’s Eclipse Awards. He has been publishing his Triple Crown picks, with decidedly mixed results, for the past decade.)
(Updates last paragraph to show Skinner was scatched from the race.)
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