Wrote the Saturday newspaper column about Saturday's Arkansas Derby and Blue Grass and got lost in old pp's and charts seeing where Derby winners and favorites have made their final preps in recent years. Here are the last 15, color-coded by race:
Not surprisingly, there's a lot of blue and yellow in there for the Wood and Santa Anita Derby. More surprisingly, the winners of those two races are a combined 2-for-33 in the last 20 Derbies; the last five winners of both races all missed the trifecta at Churchill; and 10 straight Santa Anita Derby winners have finished worse than third in Kentucky. A $2 win bet on all Wood and SA Derby winners in the last 20 years would have cost $66 and returned $14.80 -- $8.20 on Sunday Silence in 1989 and $6.60 on Fusaichi Pegasus in 2000.