Forte And His Competition Clock Their Last Works At Churchill; Here’s How They Look

The Kentucky Derby Class of 2023 is ready to run. As race day on May 6 heaves ever closer, it’s axiomatic in the Derby trainers’ playbook that their athletes are putting in their last works before coasting on a kind of morning maintenance, along with a bit of gate-and-paddock schooling. None of it is about fitness — no trainer is “changing” anything, at least not anything big. This pre-race week is about honing, not letting anybody get stale, and a bit of tactical adjustment with the jockeys as the always crucial Derby post positions are drawn.

The 2023 Derby post position draw will be held at Churchill and on Monday, 1 May, between 2-3 p.m. local time (ET), and will be livestreamed on KentuckyDerby.com. As the results inform us every year, the Derby post positions matter immensely in this race and arguably more than in the Preakness or the Belmont. There are a host of reasons for that, some calculable, some incalculable. Foremost, the draw matters because of the consistently high number of entries in the country’s first Triple Crown race (capped at 20 runners by the size of the gate). That means they stage a mad crush as they break from Churchill’s massive gate and vye for position into the first turn. The first quarter-mile of every Kentucky Derby more closely resembles a rugby scrum than a horse race.

Post positions also matter because of the relative immaturity of the adolescent 3-year-olds’ minds and bodies, which is to say, their ability to handle that. And that goes for horses that have had fulsome juvenile careers, such as the Todd Pletcher-trained top favorite Forte, or whether they have not had a juvenile career, such as the strong contender Kingsbarns, also trained by Pletcher. In a word, no matter what they’ve done or not done to get into the Derby, none of them have ever confronted anything like this race in their very short lives, and the great majority of them will never experience anything like it again.

What players are left with as tools are the Derby point standings — which is another way of saying, past performances that have counted toward their invitations to enter — and the other more ordinary tools of the handicapping kit, the trainers, the jockeys, and how the horses are training now that they are booked in.

Todd Pletcher is the commanding trainer of the 149th running of the Kentucky Derby, with no less than four possible contenders bunched very high in the handicappers’ estimations. Saturday, April 29, was a big morning at Churchill, with the Pletcher-trained likely top favorite Forte, pictured at top with Irad Ortiz in the irons in that work, putting in a steady half-mile in 50.09 seconds, before galloping out five furlongs at 1:03.50. Forte’s much touted stablemate Tapit Trice showed a bit more brass, racking up a half-mile with dispatch, in 48.58 and galloping out five furlongs in 1:01.2. Nothing wasted there by either horse, and not too much spent, either, given that the race is less than a week out. The idea is to conserve, and maintain.