Mystik Dan by a nose in 150th Kentucky Derby

[Dave Greening of DRF reporting provided  some of this write-up] - 

May 4, 2024 - Louisville, Kentucky - Mystik Dan [#3], coming out of a third-place finish in the Arkansas Derby, needed every ground-saving inch of Brian Hernandez piloted post riding trip to hold off Sierra Leone by a nose in the closest Derby finish since Grindstone beat Cavonnier in 1996. It was a stirring performance.

“When you have a deep closer like that, sometimes you’re going to have to go through some traffic and go wide,” said Sierra Leone [#2] Trainer Chad Brown, who finished second in the Derby for the second time in six years. “I’ll have to look at the trip a little closer, but it doesn’t really matter, he got beat a nose.”

Third placed by hardly more than another nose was Japanese invader Forever Young [#11], named after the Bob Dylan song. Forever Young and Sierra Leone clashed and ran side-by-side robustly in the final yards.

Brown, who won other races on the card on the day, commended Mystik Dan trainer Kenny McPeek, who also won the Kentucky Oaks on Friday on the heels of Thorpedo Anna.

Winner of the SouthWest, Mystik Dan had show capability on poor surfaces before. The Derby track today was somewhat muddy to the view of this viewer. He'd run well with Muth, the Bob Baffert trainee barred from the Derby given its trainer's past shenanigans. Muth and Mystik may meet in Maryland for the Preakness.

The two-year-old champ and 3-1 favorite Fierceness battled timidly for the lead at the start, and sequentially faded, to reach a 15th-place finish, 24 1/4 lengths behind the winner.

Who picked Fierceness on top? Beyer, Free, Siegel - Christ, just about everybody. With caveats. Said Free: He is the horse to beat. But he is not a mortal lock. Now we can say: "Free was right."

For our part, we created modest exotics around Fierceness and some long shots - Then took the opportunity to paster some of those long shots with Win tix. These mid-pack runners (Domestic Product and Stronghold) didn't show much zest in the Derby's final stretch. But a hedge built around Mystik Dan made the race fairly richly profitable for this punter. A place bet on second-place finisher Sierra Leone [which we downgraded given the long zigging path widely predicted] helped cushion the mis-prediction on Domestic and Stronghold. 

Been a while since we cashed Derby tix. Good start to the real racing year.- B.B