Super Saver is the answer to a trivia question that illustrates the Tampa Bay Derby’s place in the Kentucky Derby trail food chain:
Name the last Tampa Bay Derby alum to win the Run for the Roses.
Note, we didn’t say “winner.” That’s because Super Saver finished third in the 2010 Tampa Bay Derby, before winning that year’s Derby.
You get the idea. This week’s Grade 3 Tampa Bay Derby, a 1 1/16-mile stop on the Derby trail, is Tampa Bay Downs’ marquee race. It’s often entertaining, but rarely is it a predictor of Derby success. Super Saver and 2007 Tampa Bay Derby winner Street Sense were the only alums this century wearing roses at Churchill Downs the first Saturday of May.
The Tampa Bay Derby did send 2017 champion Tapwrit to the Belmont Stakes title that year. But even that couldn’t prevent the race being downgraded from a Grade 2 to a Grade 3 this year. It had been a Grade 2 since 2011.
Derby Qualifying Points
Yet, it comes with 50-20-15-10-5 Derby qualifying points to the top five finishers, a points haul enough to get the winner into the Churchill Downs Game on May 4. And out of the 10 entries, there’s a small group of contenders likely to walk away with that haul.
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Coulda Been a Contender
The list begins with No More Time, who won the Grade 3 Sam F. Davis a month ago on this very track, prevailing at 3.30-1 with a front-running trip that held off a surging Agate Road. But in a clear illustration of one of horse racing’s many flaws, savvy bettors who scoped out the right time to bet No More Time had the value erased from their wager in short order.
How short? Jon White, Santa Anita Park’s oddsmaker and an Xpressbet columnist, chronicled that No More Time was 10-1 on the morning line and 5-1 entering the gate. He dropped to 9-2 sitting in the gate. By the time he crossed the wire 1:43.26 later, he was 3-1.
Infuriating betting situations aside, the Iowa-bred son of Not This Time is 2-for-4, breaking his maiden in his second start last October at Gulfstream Park. Sent to the Listed Mucho Macho Man for his stakes debut New Year’s Day, No More Time had no more left after a rank start. He finished a woeful fifth of six, although he was less than four lengths from the front. He’s 2-1-0 in his four starts.
No More Time’s chief competitor figures to be Domestic Product, the likely favorite. The Chad Brown trainee comes in off a solid second in the Grade 3 Holy Bull at Gulfstream Park in January. That finish, only two lengths behind undefeated winner Hades, came after he pinballed off Champion 2-Year-Old Fierceness at the start, then rebounded into Dancing Groom.
Nonplussed, Domestic Product grinded his way into contention, swinging from the rail to six-wide in mid-stretch to grab a piece.
The Practical Joke colt has one win in four starts and a seventh in his other stakes start by 16 ¼ lengths: the Grade 2 Remsen at Aqueduct in December. But that race defined “key race,” meaning it was a race that sent several starters to victories or strong finishes in their next race.
Up and Down Experience
Winner Dornoch won last week’s Fountain of Youth. Remsen runner-up Sierra Leone won the Risen Star at Fair Grounds three weeks ago. Third-place finisher Drum Roll Please captured the Jerome Stakes at Aqueduct by nearly four lengths. And Le Dom Bro (who was ninth of 10) and Domestic Product both finished second in their next stakes outings. And it bears mentioning that Domestic Product beat the 2-Year-Old Champion—Fierceness—by nearly two lengths.
Brown also sends out Good Money for what is his second career start. The son of Good Magic beat odds-on favorite Acclaimed Victor by a length in a January maiden special weight race at Tampa Bay Downs.
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If you’re looking for another angle than those three, there’s Heartened, who is Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher’s lone entry. Pletcher has won this event a record six times, including last year with Tapit Trice. His charge here makes his stakes debut in his fifth career start (1-1-2) coming off a 4 ½-length score that illustrated a fine late kick in the stretch, where Heartened pulled away from the field.
