Kentucky Derby Favorites Who’s Who: Top Morning Line Runner Renegade

Stall No. 1 in the Churchill gate in the face of a 20-horse field thundering down into the first turn does still mean that Irad Ortiz will have to take back — or that he must, more daringly and dangerously, try to squirt out in front, then slide back off the pace as they work up the backstretch. Any way you cut it, the stall adds a daunting, traffic-rich tactical series of sidesteps to Renegade’s burgeoning do-list in the race — in addition to whatever tactical problems Pletcher, Ortiz and Repole were thinking they faced just having to work their man to the front in the last two furlongs on Saturday. Breaking from the rail in a Derby gives the equine athlete quite some choreography of gear-shifting in addition to the gear-shifting required of nominally “better” post positions.

The question for Renegade — and the reason that the three-time Derby winning trainer Pletcher is less than sanguine about being slotted into the rail — is simply that the extra layer of demand brought by the rail in a Derby can become the straw that broke the camel’s back in this one traffic-choked race.

Which brings us back to the first question inspired by Odds-czar Tammaro’s position that Renegade has the moxie to overcome all foes and all track disadvantages: The Churchill rail hole is “dreaded” not just because it’s 0-for-6 since the new gate was introduced. Of the last fifteen Derbies, nine (or 60%) have been won by runners starting from stall Nos. 15-20. That implies that the ordinarily holy tactical notion of “saving ground” is far less important in a Kentucky Derby than the simply doing what you have to do to get a clean trip. In reference to Renegade, it means that anything he and Ortiz devise to get around the traffic will be better for them than staying inside.

It will remain an irony of Saturday’s race — and of Derby history — that all outside post positions are not alike, and some can even be worse than the rail. Derby champ Ferdinand did in fact win the big race from the rail in 1986, forty years ago, the last contender to do so. Post 14, by contrast, last produced a winner sixty-five years ago, in 1961, when Carry Back (who also won the Preakness) went off as the 5-2 favorite and breezily carried the day with a commanding two-plus length stretch run.

Pletcher, Ortiz and Repole will be hoping their boy can snap the rail hole’s four-decade drought with a dancing, traffic-free run on Saturday.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com