Horses being named to win the Epsom Derby and the superstition of numbers

I lost my original post so missed out the aforementioned

Sir Percy - 8 - 2006

And the most famous of all:

Shergar - 7 - 1981

Many others of course and feel free to add to the list.

People may scoff at the idea but seems that the name Camelot was saved especially for their last horse to try the triple crown. A name that was meant to cement it along with the greats of the past and also tradition of the only Derby.

Thanks for remembering that Arc.
I think I gave the issue plenty of publicity so it rebounded on them a bit.

If you want to see what I have been doing look at foalmare.com. - website live 16/04/25.
A bit of work about a year ago was https://www.sport-horse-breeder.com/Northern-Dancer-Decode.html
This week I am looking at what breeze up sales horses have in their pedigrees - what makes them fast for a few hundred metres.
I think I know but am analyisig six years of sales results (UK; IRE; FR) for evidence.

I asked elsewhere Kincsem if you know how many April foals have won the Derby? I can recall Saint Nicolas Abbey being one, a reason why I was against him for the guineas and took Makfi after watching his Dejbel win live. I’d read about how he loved the long straight at Fontenbleau where he won first time out and Delzangles and CP Lemaire were sure that the straight mile at Newmarket would be right to his liking. CP had a tremendous strike rate at Newmarket back then a proper A - Team mission and plot! 

Lots were on the Elusive Pimpernel at the time but history has shown to take on impressive Craven winners.

Figgis I can recall people saying that that Guineas was ran at a crawl like this years version.

Sandown I’ve enjoyed your contributions also to the Arc thread and encourage more than one thread a year contribution!

This is all you need to know about foaling dates (I post a few times on racecafe.co.nz as diomed).
https://www.racecafe.co.nz/forums/index.php?/topic/100750-early-foaling-vs-race-performance/#comment-697885

Foaling dates are a result of owner choice and trying to assess ability from foaling dates is chasing smoke.

The same with birth rank i.e. the idea that foals earlier in a mare's stud career are better.
The reason a mare's early career foals are better is that the owners still have money for better sire stud fees (my opinion).

People say the first foal is always smaller.
Perhaps, but show me a study with foal weights and I might believe it, and better still show me a study with the running ratings of all the foals, early and late.

Another old wife's tale is black type - the idea that foals inherit ability from their dam.
The link is weak - for every extra point rating of the dam the foal inherits about 1/4 of a point - and that after the better dams go to the most expensive sires!
(or worse still the belief that a runner inherits ability from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th dam, and even more idiotic is the idea that a runner out of the 4th dam by a different sire is relevant to the foal).

SPEED IS NOT INHERITED. IT IS PRODUCED BY CORRECT INBREEDING, and most of the inbreeding for the last 30/40 years is the type that produces slow horses (see foalmare.com)
Fewer stallions at stud now, larger stallion books (numbers covered), stallion shuttling ..... and the result is pedigrees saturated with "sons of duplicated sires" in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th generations of pedigrees.

"That sire stamps his stock", "the mare is out of a good family" bloodstock agent speak to fill the silences --- about as informative as telling me grass is green.


If you want to have an edge search for my posts about the Epsom Derby draw (the posts could be up to ten years ago).
from 1967 to 2010 "lucky stall 10" won eight times and stalls 11 and 12 did not have one winner.
The star was even more amazing when you take away the no-hopers that came out of stall 10 e.g. Portugese Lil 500/1

The reason was Epsom uses two 10 runner stalls machines and the horse in 10 leads the charge to the outside rail cutting off 11 and 12.
I wrote to the BHA and they did not do the obvious (buy a 20 runner machine like they have at York).
Instead they moved the two machines into the centre of the course and filled an equal number left and right of the gap between the two machines.
look at Youtube 2010 (?) Derby and 2011 Derby (or a few years around that time).
Now they seem to be reverting to the pre-2010 way of filling machine 1 fully (10 runners) and the remainder in machine 2 - and stall 10 is probably the beneficiary again.


Yeah, Solemia was nice. Euro 182 at 75s, a 12,800 return.  All her form was at 2400m on soft or heavy.
The world was betting on the very fast and classy Japanese horse Orfevre - all his form was on firm but the going was heavy.
I will say it again - Longchamp is clay. Clay gets rock hard when dry and like superglue when wet.

And this Years Winner LAMBOURN  8 letters folks!

Might be something to look at next year ;)