Texas Red going Old School in the San Vicente

When the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner, and the current number one horse on my 2015 Kentucky Derby rankings, Texas Red, begins his three-year-old season, he will do so in a sprint. Sunday’s seven furlong San Vicente at Santa Anita will be his first stop on a road tentatively planned to also include the Risen Star at Fair Grounds and the Santa Anita Derby, on his way to potential Derby glory. On the surface, it appears trainer Keith Desormeaux has mapped out a reasonable plan to get to Louisville, but a closer look reveals that the late running son of Afleet Alex will be taking the road less traveled by beginning his three-year-old year in a sprint.

Zero of the last 13 Kentucky Derby winners have begun their sophomore season in a sprint race. The extended streak would seem a pretty strong statement on how current trainers prefer to get their horse to the Kentucky Derby winner’s circle, but it was not always this way.

In 1973, Secretariat returned from his Horse of the Year juvenile season in the seven furlong Bay Shore. Big Red won the Bay Shore going away to begin his march towards becoming the most famous Triple Crown winner in American racing history.

Four years later, it was Seattle Slew popping up in a seven furlong allowance race at Hialeah for his first start of 1977. Slew won by daylight in 1:20 and change, and three months later became our first and only horse to win the Triple Crown while still undefeated.

In 1978, it was the turn of the great rivals, Affirmed and Alydar to star on the Kentucky Derby trail. Affirmed kicked off his second season with an easy score in a 6 ½ furlong allowance race at Santa Anita, while Alydar began a year that would see him finish second to his rival in all three legs of the Triple Crown, by rallying to win a seven furlong allowance affair at Hialeah.

Somehow he was denied the Triple Crown, but the sensational Spectacular Bid started his three-year-old season much the same as the other superstars of the seventies. Bid won the seven furlong Hutcheson at Gulfstream Park in hand, and in style.

More recently, since the greats of the ‘70’s, stars like Sunday Silence, Easy Goer, and Silver Charm all began their three-year-old campaigns in a sprint. In fact, both Fusaichi Pegasus and Monarchos got the 21st century started by winning the Kentucky Derby after kicking off their sophomore seasons sprinting. But since that pair, nothing. It begs the question: do the new generation of trainers know something their predecessors did not?

If beginning your three-year-old season, and Kentucky Derby trail, in a sprint was good enough for horses like Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Affirmed, Alydar, and Spectacular Bid, I have to wonder why it has become so unfashionable of late. You could almost say that for Texas Red, certainly one of the top juveniles of 2014, is going ‘old school’ by beginning his season in the San Vicente, and I, for one, like it. I believe it should serve well the process of gradually building stamina, in race-day conditions, on the way to peaking on the first Saturday in May. Of course, I am a little bit old school myself. Good luck to Texas Red.