For Florida's Derby, here are my general thoughts:
Not a lot of speed in this race, as it is cheap and slow. I think the only reason why the speed horses are entered in this race is to try and fight for either 4th or 5th place prize money. Other than that, I don't see either the 2, 5, or 6 winning this race. Also because of the potential for a slow to medium pace, you can forget the 3 and the 8 horse as they won't have the pace to create an opportunity to close.
This leaves me with the 1, 4, 7, 9. Which horses have run against the fastest pace? Despite drawing the numbers from 1 turn miles, both the 1 and the 4 have raced against the fastest 4 and 6 furlong pace in their respective 8 furlong races. So these two are my contenders.
My knock against the 7 horse is that although that last race at 9 furlongs was nice, the horse is being asked to run another 9 furlongs in 3 weeks time. Couple in the fact that this will only be the horse's 3rd race in its entire career, with no races run as a 2 year old, there is a chance for a bounce to happen.
As for the 9, it hasn't really run an exceptional looking race time-wise in comparison to the 1 or the 4. That Holy Bull Beyer number is for some reason a 105, yet its speed rating, which is calculated in comparison to the track record, is a modest 86. Scan through the non-Beyer speed ratings of both the 1 and the 4 and they look, on paper, to be faster horses.
Since I can't decide between the two, I will take both the
and the
to win.