Handicapping the 2018 Kentucky Derby

I love trying to handicap The Derby.

It's generally an exercise in futility, but it is also an exercise in fun.

On the off-chance you are thinking of watching the race, and are looking for some talking points, this is how I see the field shaping up this year:

The Longshots:

Firenze Fire (50-1):
Let's start with an easy one. Firenze Fire has run four races this year, and has come away with one win. He finished an ordinary-looking 4th at the Wood Memorial. Do not bet on this horse.

Free Drop Billy (30-1):
Free Drop Billy had a great 2 yr old season, but hasn't been able to get anything together as a 3 yr old.  He has the kind of come from behind style that works very well in the Kentucky Derby, but with no evidence of being able win as a 3 yr old, I would stay away

Promises Fulfilled (30-1):
Promises Fulfilled showed a huge burst of opening speed at the Florida Derby, but could only hold it for ¾ of a mile. That won't cut it in this race

Flameaway (30-1):
Another speedster, Flameaway got away from a crowded field to start clean at The Bluegrass.  He tried gamely to go wire to wire, but just couldn’t close.  I think he is the best chance among the longshots for a dark-horse, wire-to-wire winner, and at 30-1 could be worth a flyer.

Lone Sailor (50-1):
Lone Sailor ran a very good race in the Louisiana Derby to come in 2nd. He has a great running style and looked tenacious in that race coming through traffic. I like this horse a lot among the longshots, but not quite as much as...

My Boy Jack (30-1):

Watch this race, and check out the BIG outside move My Boy Jack uses to come in 3rd from way back in the pack.

Then watch this clip, where he wins the Stonestreet Lexington from pretty much dead last. His late speed looks great, and could work really well on a crowded track like we are likely to see at The Derby. His odds are long because he hasn't featured against top-tier competition, but he represents a great value bet

Enticed (30-1):
Enticed gave Vino Rosso a real run for his money at the Wood Memorial, a race in which Enticed did not get to run his preferred style, getting stuck running at the front for much of the race.  He looked better at the Gotham, but just doesn’t seem to have “It” to my eye.

Bravazo (50-1):
Wants to run from the front but doesn't have enough pure speed to build a defendable lead against this field

Instilled Regard (50-1):
4th at Santa Anita in a field of 7
A blase 4th at the Risen Star
I don’t see much here

Solomini (30-1):
Together with My Boy Jack, Solomini is my other longshot gem.

Watch how hard he fights to make 3rd at the Arkansas Derby. He gets squeezed hard right out of gate and then forced 5-wide for much of the race, running a much longer effective race than the competition.  Solomini got an inside ride for most of the Rebel stakes, but got pinched out on the rail on the home stretch and settled for 2nd. Probably underbet because he doesn't have a marquee victory, but this horse can RACE, and is worth a few bucks. He is starting a ways outside at post 17, but if he can get some room to move through the field, he could definitely be a factor.

Noble Indy (30-1):
Won the Louisiana Derby, but did not look like the most impressive horse in that race to me. Does not seem to have the staying power for the Derby.

The Middle of the Pack:

Good Magic (12-1):

Good Magic won The Bluegrass in a crowded field coming from 5^th place in a very nicely run race.

I'm not sure why he's sitting at 12-1 to be honest.  I think there is good value here.

Vino Rosso (12-1):

I really like the discipline Vino Rosso showed in the Wood Memorial, not getting caught up by the blistering first 1/4 mile, and setting up a great come from behind victory, finishing really strong.  That said, Vino Rosso looked VERY BAD at the Tampa Bay Derby, so that lack of consistency is concerning. Starting from the 18 post can be hard, but is easier on a come from behind runner like Vino Rosso, so it shouldn't hurt him too much.

Hofburg (20-1):

How is Hofburg at 20-1? He finished 2nd at the Florida Derby and kept pace with the winner, Audible through the finish.  The only issue was that he sat back too deep in 2nd last before making his move and had too much ground to make up.  He has another victory, also won in come from behind style.  He's been lightly raced this year, and should be relatively fresh. I don't figure on him being a contender to win (Audible is a very similar horse, only better), but he could definitely place.

The Not-Quite Favourites:

Audible (8-1):

The Florida Derby winner, coming from behind (8^th at ½ mile) in a stretched out field with little traffic (check out Hofburg's 2nd place finish in this clip too). The style with which he ran in Florida is perfect for The Kentucky Derby, but the question is if he can do it in a much more crowded field.  If he can stay clear of traffic, he has a legitimate shot at winning

Bolt d’Oro (8-1):

Bolt d'Oro finished 2^nd to Justify at Santa Anita, which is nothing to be ashamed of, but to my eye, he faded badly in the late-going, and that does not bode well for his chances at the Derby.

The Favourites:

Justify (3-1):

I don't quite know what to make of the Santa Anita winner.  Look at how casually he runs the first half of this race:

A Grade 1 win is a Grade 1 win but he didn’t look super impressive to me. Belt d’Oro faded but was a handful for him along the final turn. Justify likes to run from the front, which is always tough to do at The Derby.  Justify seems to have an extra gear that we haven't really seen yet, so maybe he could get there?  At 3-1, I'm not sure about the value of the bet, but you have to respect his results so far, and starting from the number 7 post is just about the perfect set up for him to take this race. It feels a bit lame to recommend going with the chalk, but it's hard to argue otherwise this year...

Mendelssohn (5-1):

No UAE Derby winner has ever finished higher than 5th at The Kentucky Derby.

Then again, no UAE Derby winner has ever demolished the field like Mendelssohn did earlier this year:

Now THAT was an impressive-looking piece of racing. But then again, the field took it very easy off the start, and didn't push him early, allowing him to save strength for that ridiculous push in the last 1/4 mile.  Throw in the travel, and the different dirt we have in North America, and I'm not sure Mendelssohn is worth it at 5-1

Magnum Moon (6-1):

The Arkansas Derby winner closed strong after running from the front for much of that race.  As with Justify, there are questions around whether he can handle traffic in a big field.  He's got a good post position out at 14 to give him a bit of room out of the gate if he can't get immediately clear. Unlike Justify, I think Magnum Moon has more questions around if he has the endurance to go all the way in The Derby.  Both Solomini and My Boy Jack look like they could have maybe taken Magnum Moon in a longer race.

Brian's Picks:

OK, so who do I like enough to put some units on?

1-unit Exacta Box Justify/Audible/Hofburg/Solomini (12 units total)

1-unit Trifecta Part Wheel Justify/Audible/(Hofburg-Solomini-Mendelssohn-Flameaway) (4 units total)

2-unit Win/Place/Show on My Boy Jack (6 units)

2-unit Win/Place/Show on Solomini (6 units)

2-unit Show on Flameaway (2 units)

30 units worth of excitement for the fastest two minutes in sports!

Get your fancy hats and mint juleps ready - should be a fun race

We All Have A Favourite Tragically Hip Story - This Is Mine

It was a Friday night.

The Canucks were in town.

The Hip were in town.

It was Canada-Day-in-October here in DC.

I looked at the half-dozen or so different iterations of Vancouver Canucks jerseys in my closet, and pulled out the goldenrod, Flying-V for maximum obnoxiousness.  One of the ugliest, yet most distinctive jerseys in the history of pro sports, its high visibility turned out to be a catalyst for one of my favourite nights out in DC, ever.

Meeting up with Ana & Scott before the game, I was already feeling pretty festive. The Canucks only play in DC once per season, and to have the game lining up with The Hip’s seemingly annual visit to the 9:30 Club made for a perfect double feature. 

Looking around the arena, I saw a handful of Canucks jerseys scattered around the crowd, but not many – certainly nothing like what you see at Penguins, Flyers, or (oddly) Sabres games.

The puck dropped and two minutes in, Daniel Sedin scored to give the Canucks a 1-0 lead.  Right around then is when things got nutty.

I can’t remember if it was me jumping out of my seat when the goal was scored, or something else that triggered it, but I do remember Scott tapping me on my arm and saying “Hey, that guy over there seems to know you…”

I glanced one section over to the right, and standing there, arms spread wide, wearing the same goofball grin I hadn’t seen in 8 years, was Chad, with his old sidekick Regier right there next to him. 

“BRRRIIIIIIIIAAAAANNNNN THHHAAAAAMMMMMM!!!!!”

“Chad!  Holy $#!^ What the #&@^ are you doing here?”

<at that point, someone else sitting in my section asked me to watch the cursing. Chad and I decided we would meet on the concourse at intermission>

The first period ended with the Canucks up 2-1, at which point we got the download.

Chad, and Regier had been following the Canucks around on an Eastern road trip as it’s cheaper to see the Canucks this way than it is trying to get tickets back home.  They’d seen them in Detroit and a few other cities already.  DC was the last stop on the trip.

As we stood on the concourse, getting caught up on our lives and revisiting old UBC stories, I got it in my head that I wanted to call my old roommate, Matt, just to let him know that this crazy thing had happened.

Me: “Matt! It’s Brian – I’m at the Caps game tonight.  The Canucks are in town, and you’ll never guess who I ran into one section over: Chad and Regier!”

Matt: “Wow, that’s really crazy that you just called me just now.  I’m actually at the hospital – Jo just went into labour.”

Me: <silence as brain explodes>

After stumbling through some congratulations and sharing the news with the rest of the hockey-watching crew, we noted that the intermission was coming to an end.

Wanting to lock in a way to keep the party going, Chad made the first move.

“We should hang out after the game – Do you guys have plans?”

Did we have plans?  I couldn’t believe what was just about to fall into place…

“Uh… well… you’re not going to believe this, but we’re actually going to go see The Tragically Hip right after this”

Needless to say, Chad and Regier decided they would join us.

The Canucks won the game 3-2, but by the time the game ended, its outcome was totally inconsequential to me.  This night was all about riding this incredible wave of happy coincidences as far as it would take me.

We arrived at The 9:30 Club for the show, picked up a couple of extra tickets for Chad and Regier, and staked out mine and Liz’s favourite spot along the mezzanine stairs.

A bit of context for Canadian readers – The 9:30 Club is the best live music venue in DC. It has capacity for about 1000 people. The Hip would play there frequently to an audience made up almost exclusively of Canadian expats.  The idea that, as a Canadian expat, you get access to see one of your favourite, arena-filling bands in that kind of venue is an underrated perk of living abroad.

I can’t remember what The Hip opened with (edit: it was Yer Not the Ocean – thanks internet!), but they played New Orleans next, during which I looked back to see Chad on the phone with his wife, gloating about where he was at that moment.  And why not?  This was certainly a night worth gloating about.  I’ve seen The Hip play several times since that crazy night, and every show has been great, but nothing will ever top the amazing confluence of circumstances that made this particular night possible.

As a Canadian living amidst so much of the USA’s mythologized history and ideology, the constant assimilatory pressure of US culture can sometimes threaten to overwhelm competing elements of one’s personality.  Even other Canadians get erroneously claimed by Americans simply because that’s their default view of things: I once got into a heated debate with someone who was 100% sure that Barenaked Ladies were from Boston.

But The Hip could never be mistaken for anything else but Canadian.  There are too many inside jokes, and deep-cut references that only Canadians can claim.  It has probably harmed their prospects of “Making It” in the US over the years, but we’ve never cared. That very quality, that unapologetic Canadianness has always made them a key touchstone for me, and for nearly every other Canadian living far from home, the opening strains of every Track 1 serving as a reminder of where we all came from and what we all share.

The Tragically Hip will never play The 9:30 Club again. As they embarked on their final tour across Canada, Liz and I gave serious thought to flying back to Vancouver or Toronto to take in one last show.  But after thinking long and hard about it, worried that a nosebleed seat at the top of an arena wouldn’t deliver what we were hoping for, we decided that we would prefer to make this night our last great memory of The Hip. 

He sang, 'I'll die before I quit'

And this guy's the limit

Stares into the queer of the firefight

It can't be Nashville every night

Never Tell Me The Odds - On Playing PowerBall

You know the scene.  Han Solo is about to take the Millenium Falcon into an asteroid field to shake Imperial pursuit when C3P0 chimes in:

"Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three thousand, seven hundred and twenty to one!"

Han of course replies “Never tell me the odds!”

But in today’s information-saturated, over-metricized, infographicked, post-Moneyball world, we are always told the odds.

And we are poorer for it.

Distilling all things down to algorithms and models and stats is great for a lot of things.  It’s great for science and technology and sports banter, but there’s a cost to it as well.

It kills the fun.

In an operations management class I took, there was a case study contrasting Yamaha’s piano manufacturing systems with Steinway’s.  The case study was written to highlight how Yamaha’s use of automation, and standardization allowed them to produce a consistent, high-quality piano at lower cost.  This was supposed to come across as superior to Steinway’s hand-made methods that produced very expensive pianos that all sounded different from one another.

All of that is true.  Democratising music by making high-quality pianos broadly affordable to Tiger-moms all over the world is surely a good thing.

But isn’t the thought that, somewhere out there, there is an outlier piano tuned perfectly for your playing style and your living room, kind of magical?  That’s the essence of The Human Factor in all things.  You never know when the laws of variation might give you an instance of transcendent perfection.

This is where the 3-POs kick in: Problem number one – you’re a crappy piano player.  Problem number two – you’ll never afford one.

Again, all true.  But why kill the fun?

Later today, a PowerBall jackpot worth around $1.4 Billion will be up for grabs.  And predictably, the internet is already full of smug quants reminding all of us that we won’t win, given that the odds are stacked 292 million to 1 against us.

Don’t tell us the odds.  We know the odds.  We’ve always known the odds, and when it all comes down to it, it’s not about the odds.

It’s about that magical possibility.  That “1” in 292 million to 1. 

Yes, our daydreams and grand plans for Porsches, Yachts, and a University Cafeteria bearing our name are ridiculous.  But they are also fun. 

The gleeful thought of your entire department resigning en masse after hitting it big, leaving only an odds-spouting troll and the boss behind is kind of a terrible thing, but again, pretty damn fun to think about.

That narcissitic vision of starting your own foundation and (say it with me) “making the world a better place?”  Yes, totally rote; yes, totally cliché.  But, oh, how much fun.

Yes, lotteries are, by and large, a tax on the ignorant and hopeful.  Yes, winning the lottery often winds up being less pleasant than people think.  And yes, gambling addiction is a real thing, and can have some pretty destructive consequences.

But you know what?  Screw all that.  There’s $1.4 Billion out there with our names on it, and we’re in it to win it.

Just remember:

Never tell us the odds

Bladerunner: Deckard is a Replicant - But of Whom?

Recently, I had a twitter conversation with some old friends about BladeRunner, one of my favourite films as outlined here.  Specifically, we were kicking around the theory that Deckard is a replicant of Gaff, with Gaff’s memories being implanted into Deckard’s brain in order to fool him into thinking of himself as human.

It’s an interesting theory, but one with which I disagree.  Twitter is not the best medium for outlining a path of reasoned thought, so I figured that this was deserving of some long-form discourse.  The Deckard-As-Replicant-Gaff theory does have some evidence going for it, so I’m going to begin with some rebuttals.

From Captain Canuck to President Canuck - Welcome Back, #16

Despite my love for the sport, I don’t often blog about hockey.  The sports blogosphere is already overfull of armchair-types who spend too much time watching and not enough time playing.  But today is an exception.

It has never been easy to be a Vancouver Canucks fan.  And it has been even less easy to be a Vancouver Canucks fan living outside of Vancouver, as I have been for most of my life.  Aside from being woeful at playing hockey for most of my youth, the Canucks were also prone to questionable design decisions regarding their uniforms, being on the losing end of nearly every trade they made, and having a nickname that conveniently rhymes with “suck.”  You know you have it bad, when even your high school computer science teacher would talk smack about your favourite team…

Things started to get a little easier in 1988, when the Canucks drafted Trevor Linden.  This was before the internet, blogs and twitter made everything so much more instantly researchable.  I didn’t watch him play major junior, I didn’t know anything about his play in the Memorial Cup.  Nothing.  All I knew was that the Canucks had drafted a really good prospect who could maybe help the team turn things around.

Six years later, the Canucks were in the Stanley Cup Final, and Trevor Linden had cemented his place as my favourite professional athlete ever.

It’s difficult to love and hate sports figures as a grown adult.  Each year broadens your perspective and introduces you to other things that make sports so much less important to you than they used to be.  But in 1994, at the age of 17, nothing mattered more to me than that Canucks team, and no player on that team mattered more to me than #16.

Today, Trevor Linden was named President of the Vancouver Canucks.

It’s a great PR move.  I’m far from the only Canucks fan to put Linden on a pedestal.  Trevor Linden could say that he wanted to invade Ukraine, and half the Lower Mainland would be ready to throw the first molitov cocktail.  At a time when the team is imploding, and the Vancouver fanbase, replete with bandwagon-jumpers, is waffling on their season-ticket decisions, nobody can secure that season ticket revenue better than Linden can.

But is it a great hockey move?  There is a lot of noise on Twitter and likely more than a few articles being written that will decry Linden’s lack of hockey management experience.  That’s not a fact to be argued with.  He has none.  There is no way to deny it:  This isn’t the best hockey move the team can make.

The thing is, it doesn’t have to be.

Being a Canucks fan has always required a nearly absurd amount of faith, belief, and optimism.  Noone has ever answered that better than Trevor Linden. 

And even then, we still fell one goal-post short of winning it all with him.

Nonetheless, we all remember that team, and we all remember Linden as the guy who scored two goals in Game 7 of the Cup Final while playing with broken ribs.

The Canucks, as a franchise, are a mess.  They’ve traded away two all-star caliber goalies in two years for pennies on the dollar.  They’re built around an increasingly fragile and aging core, with too little depth.  Their coach may be a certifiable lunatic with no idea as to how he should play his roster.  If Linden needs time to fix this mess, time to learn how to be an NHL executive, the fans will give him that time – he’s earned it more than anybody.

In today’s Vancouver Province, Jason Botchford suggested that Canucks fans would rather lose with Linden than win with somebody else.  That’s a ridiculous statement.  Canucks fans want to win.  And there is nobody else in the world we want to win with more than Trevor Linden.

On Being a Chinese-looking, half-South African, and Family Stories That Should Be Told More Often

The recent passing of Nelson Mandela, as well as a few events in my own family have had me thinking of my South African heritage a great deal in recent days.

I always enjoy the reaction I get when I tell people that my mother was born in South Africa.  Reactions range from:

Outright denial - "No way!"

Trying to go with the flow - "Oh... really?  That's interesting..." <smoke seeps from skull>

Immediate bonding - "My family's from Nigeria! We're practically family!" <hugs>

Immediate joking - "Well of course - you totally look South African! /sarcasm"

That last one is particularly fun, because for most of the 20th Century, if you were from South Africa, how you looked mattered a LOT.

Cute & Creepy Asian Kids Love Panera

Lunch during a rough day at work is going to go one of two ways:

Option 1: The most unhealthy, comforting food your can find, consumed in huge quantities with the goal of putting you in a pain-killing, carbohydrate-driven coma for the rest of the day

or

Option 2: Something fast and reasonably healthy to keep you kicking @$$ and busting heads for another four hours

Recently, I was having a bit of an Option 2 day, so I cruised down the road to Panera, getting there at 11:45 to make sure I beat the lunch rush, only to find...

That I was in the middle of the lunch rush.