Hi, everyone.  I am Matt Converse and I will be blogging about horse racing, mostly on the handicapping end with a big slant towards picking the winner of the 2008 Kentucky Derby.   I love following the two-year-olds into their three-year-old year and trying to figure out who are the contenders and who are just pretenders.   The last two years, my #3 and #1 ranked horses at this time of year ended up winning the Kentucky Derby, Barbaro and Street Sense.  Street Sense was an easy pick as he won the Breeder’s Cup Juvenile in impressive fashion and won the Eclipse for top two-year-old.  Barbaro was a trickier pick as we was mainly just a good turf horse and many doubted he would even point towards the Derby.  His sire was Dynaformer and that signaled to me he would like dirt as well.  An interesting trend in the Dynaformers is that, coincidence or not, his daughters seem to excel most on turf, and his sons seems to excel most on dirt.  Distance is seldom a problem with Dynaformers, and that gave a talented horse like Barbaro a big edge over many of today’s speed-influenced breed.   Pedigree is the single most overlooked aspect of picking a Kentucky Derby winner.  

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