Every year, the Kentucky Derby is an event where casual fans of horse racing congregate to watch the best three-year-olds in the country face off. As a result, the uninformed opinion is just as important as the informed one, because there are a lot of ways to come up with a winner. With one or two exceptions, the guests featured here have provided opinions that are baseless, silly, lighthearted, and most importantly, exactly what the Derby needs.
Joan Moquin
Once again, my mother has chosen to include her analysis among clueless counterparts. Her thoughts on the race are coherent, and don’t really belong here as a result, but will be included according to her wishes.
Joan’s Winner: 17-Tiz the Law
Joan’s Bet: EXACTA BOX with the 17-Tiz the Law, and the 16, Honor A.P.
Joan’s Wild Cards: 2- Max Player, 10- Thousand Words and 15- NY Traffic
2- Max Player
PROS:
- rising Beyer Speed Figure -99
- 3 prior wins
- strong 3rd in Travers
- strong 3rd in Belmont Stakes
- strong pedigree through sire
- Trainer Asmussen- home track
CONS:
- Deep closer
- already lost to Tiz the Law twice
10- Thousand Words
PROS:
- rising Beyers Speed Figure- 104
- debatable best trainer- B. Baffort
- impressive pedigree through sire
- recent win at Del Mar
CONS:
- front runner that will not be able to keep pace with Tiz the Law
- jockey- Geroux
15- Ny Traffic
PROS:
- rising Beyers Speed Figure- 101
- impressive 2nd in the Haskell
- pedigree through sire
CONS:
- difficult post
- not sold on trainer- SA Joseph
- not impressed with racing record
16- Honor A.P.👍🏻
PROS:
- solid Beyers Speed Figure- 102
- pedigree through sire
- great jockey- M. Smith
- any jockey that rode THE QUEEN, Zenyatta, has my approval
- trainer-J. Shirreffs also trained THE QUEEN Zenyatta
- physically imposing
CONS:
- difficult post
17- Tiz the Law👍🏻
PROS:
- horse to beat
- strong Beyer Speed Figure -109
- Strong win in Travers
- Belmont Stakes winner
- BEAST of a horse
- NY-bred -sweet!
CONS:
- Franco as rider
- difficult post
Jill Rice
After providing invaluable edits on an article I wrote earlier this week, Jill Rice has also asked that her Derby pick be included in this far more flippant article. As a copy editor, I really should have seen her prediction coming.
Jill’s Pick: 16- Honor A.P.
Note: At the point, Jill requested that a photo of her dog, Derby, be included in the article. Unfortunately, the photo is too large to upload. That’s a shame, because it’s a good dog photo, as dog photos go.
Jill: For the Kentucky Derby, I’d like to first give a shout-out to my dog, Derby, whom we got from a Kentucky rescue on what was supposed to be Derby Day. She’s not a horse, but I’m forever rooting for her. In the lineup we have Honor A.P., and as a copy editor, I have to root for that horse. In this house, we do truly Honor AP (Stylebook).
Honor A.P. is the kind of horse who respects your style choices in wording and in clothing. S/He will triumph over egregious typos like Ny Traffic and Tiz the Law, who, although star horses on their own, lose in the style department for their lack of attention to A.P.’s guidelines on capitalization and spelling, respectively.
Ny Traffic could never be quick enough to win the race; my roommate ordered pizza from 20 minutes away and it took a full two hours for it to get to her because of New York Traffic—not good odds for a horse who’s supposed to be fastest in a two-minute race.
Anthony Kraus
Anthony Kraus is one of two newcomers to Paddy’s Picks. A junior in the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University, I believe he’s one of the most promising potential handicappers I’ve ever met. Before making his Derby pick, I don’t believe he’d ever seen the Daily Racing Form, but I’m going to make sure that changes. He seems to have the head for it.
Anthony’s Pick: 17- Tiz the Law
“I’m taking Tiz the Law. $2 million? That’s a lot of money. His life is worth $2 million. His life is worth more than a lot of these horses combined. The 2 and the 3? He’s won more than those horses put together. 17’s a good number, nice number, and he’s 3-5, and we want those numbers lower, like golf. He’s better than a scratch runner. Plus his early and late pace numbers are very similar.”
Esmé Bleecker-Adams
Esmé Bleecker-Adams provided the beautiful graphic seen in my article about “My Old Kentucky Home.” It was one of many graphics she’s provided for my articles over the years, and it’s more than deserving of a guest spot in this article. The incoherence of her analysis is irrelevant.
Esmé’s Pick: ???
Esmé: While I’m sure we’d all love to see Tiz the Law take one step closer to the Triple Crown, it’s clear from the number of horses signed up for the Kentucky Derby that he’ll be running with the crowd this time around. Will it work out in his favor? The odds certainly think so, but there’s some tough competition in the creative naming category. Storm the Court, for example: a revolutionary if there ever was one. Both Money Moves and Finnick the Fierce take advantage of alliteration (doesn’t hurt that the latter shares a name with the only good character in the “Hunger Games” franchise, change my mind I dare you). Mr. Big News could make the front page, and Winning Impression certainly left a good one. Only time will tell (another good racehorse name, perhaps).
Ryan Heffron
Ryan Heffron is a deep thinking Fordham University junior that approached his Kentucky Derby task with enthusiasm. I’m not sure he’ll ever be as passionate about horse racing as he is about the works of Tolkien or the God awful music he listens to, but his contribution is the epitome of a casual fan’s analysis.
Ryan’s Pick: The 7, Money Moves, and the 18, Authentic
“Money Moves, because that’s a really baller name, and Authentic because I think that name really has something to it. It has some gravitas.”
Grace Getman
For the Travers Stakes, Grace Getman got the last word and has regretted it ever since. She has expressed disappointment with her analysis on several occasions in the weeks since, and has demanded redemption for the Kentucky Derby. I’m big on second chances, though I personally thought that her chaotic Travers analysis was exactly what that article needed.
Grace’s Pick: 17- Tiz the Law
Grace: A list of things that have only recently come to my attention:
- The Kentucky Derby isn’t usually in September.
- It truly is legal to name a horse whatever the heck you want to name it.
- The Kentucky Derby isn’t actually in Kentucky.
The third one is a lie, but I put it there just to see everyone was following along. But now that I have your attention, let me repeat for emphasis: what is going on with these poor horses’ names?
I decided to do a little thing called “research” this time around and found out that “Tiz the Law” is the favorite, with 3-5 odds. Neat, I guess, except the entirety of horse racing names are a sham? Who names their horse, “Tiz the Law”? The same type of person that establishes a whole “Tiz” dynasty, that Wikipedia tells me is very much a real thing that exists. Tiznow, Tough Tiz’s Sis, Tizway, and more have haunted America’s raceways since at least the 1990s. Tiz endless.
Tiz their style, I suppose. My guess right now is that these names are given out to prevent a mass horse rebellion by sabotaging horses’ more serious expectations of themselves – a horse named Tim could take over America.
Tiz the Law? Well, I guess he could win the Kentucky Derby.