Kentucky Derby 2020: How Churchill Downs will fill new gate

Eighteen and counting. Barring unexpected late entries, the Kentucky Derby will have only eighteen horses for the second time in 15 years.

So much for all the money and effort that Churchill Downs spent to buy and ship a custom-made, 20-stall gate from Australia. With the decision by connections Sunday to keep Rushie out of the race, only 18 horses are likely to be in the entry box for Tuesday’s draw.

But that does not mean the new gate will be useless. It is just a matter of which parts of it will be filled.

Prior to Monday's announcement that Mr. Big News would run it appeared that only 17 runners would be entered. According to a social-media post Sunday, stalls 1, 2 and 20 would be empty when the gates fly open just before 7 p.m. ET Saturday for the 146th running of the Derby if 17 entered.

Ed DeRosa, director of marketing and a TV analyst at Churchill Downs, posted a diagram on Twitter showing where the horses would be loaded depending on the field size. Crediting a track official, DeRosa said that No. 1 would be the first stall vacated. If two horses were out, the current scenario, then No. 1 and 20 would be empty. And with three absences, the two inside stalls and the one on the far outside would go unfilled. If the field shrunk to 16, then Nos. 1, 2, 19 and 20 would be vacant.

Just look at last year, when War Of Will broke from stall 2. The chart says he was in post 1, because there was no horse to his inside. When American Pharoah won the 2015 Derby, the inside and outside stalls were empty. So in a field of 18 that was numbered 1-6, 8-10 and 12-21, he wore saddle cloth 18, started in stall 16 and was listed in post 15.

Obviously, then, these anomalies should be weighed into the statistics for the Derby, so good luck with the admonition “don’t be misled.” The horses in post position 1 do not have common sets of circumstances from one year to the next.

Ferdinand in 1986 was the only horse to break from the inside-most gate and win in the last 56 runnings of the Derby. That was against 15 other starters with every spot filled in the 14-horse main gate.

On the other side of the track, none of the 41 horses that started from post 17 has ever won the Derby; Forty Niner came closest in 1988, when he finished second by a neck to Winning Colors. Wearing saddle cloth 1A, he broke from gate 17.

Normally expected to be used just once a year, the new gate gets a shakedown cruise Tuesday at 1:32 p.m. ET. That is when the second race is, like the Derby, scheduled to go 1 1/4 miles on the main track. Seven horses are entered in that maiden race, which will give the Churchill Downs gate crew a chance to try the new barrier on for size.