What to Watch For at the 2026 Kentucky Derby
We found the 5 most important rules of thumb when trying to figure out which horse will wear the roses.
The 152nd running of the Kentucky Derby is Saturday, marking the biggest horse-racing day of the year. (It’s also a famously decadent — and occasionally depraved — excuse to get dressed up, sip mint juleps and wear funny hats, but we digress.) While we love the rest of the Triple Crown as well, there’s no question that the 10-furlong race run at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May embodies the Sport of Kings’ spirit more than any other.
Of course, it’s also a chaotic, crowded race that bears little resemblance to the rest of the Triple Crown: a 20-horse traffic jam that asks a bunch of inexperienced runners to manage both speed and stamina in a way many haven’t done before. (And that’s before we get into how the odds are designed to erase any value you might find from picking the winner.)
This makes the Kentucky Derby notoriously unpredictable and volatile — but that doesn’t mean there’s no rhyme or reason whatsoever to who wins. We dug into data on Kentucky Derbies since 1973, with a particular focus on horse-by-horse data from HorseRacingNation since 2018 (the earliest edition for which we could get results and speed ratings), and uncovered five “rules of thumb” that correlate most strongly with how a horse performs in the Run For the Roses.
🐎 Speed is king.
Unsurprisingly, the most important factor to consider when thinking about horses’ Derby-winning potential is, you know, the first thing you notice when any horse is running around the track: pure speed.
That factor can be quantified in a bunch of different ways, including the ol’ tried-and-true stopwatch. But ever since Andrew Beyer invented the Speed Figure in the 1970s, that kind of measure — which adjusts raw running times for surface conditions and a track’s usual time at a given distance, among other variables — is the standard way to compare horses’ running potential.
There are different variants of it, from Beyer’s numbers in the Daily Racing Form (the bible of horse racing) to Equibase and numerous other sources. For our purposes here, we used the numbers from HorseRacingNation, which were easily accessible for analysis over the past decade or so worth of Derbies. And when we tested different combinations of data for their correlations against a horse’s finish at Churchill Downs, we found that speed reigned supreme.
Specifically, a horse’s average speed in his previous three prep races — more on how those differ later — and his lifetime peak speed in a graded prep race were easily the most predictive factors for how well a horse would finish at the Kentucky Derby. Another note: the trajectory of a horse’s speed scores (whether they’re improving or declining) doesn’t really matter much, but the consistency and absolute level of speed they’ve shown does.
In 2026, that means keep an eye on Chief Wallabee, the Bill Mott-trained colt who has run only three preps — all at Gulfstream Park in Florida — but in those preps, scored a 133, a 123 and a 121, giving him both the highest peak and 3-race average HRN speed figures of any horse in the Derby field.
The rest of the favorites separate themselves from the pack on speed résumé as well, which you might expect, though overall favorite Renegade (121 peak; 115 average) is not as impressive as his reputation — or his late kick to blow past Silent Tactic in the Arkansas Derby — would suggest. Instead, behind Chief Wallabee, the next-fastest horses are The Puma, So Happy, Commandment, Further Ado and Emerging Market.
🐎 Win your last prep — but don’t panic over 3rd place, either.
So speed in the preps matters a lot. But the ability to finish well there also carries a strong signal for a horse’s Kentucky Derby future.
Going back to 1973, horses who won their last previous prep race were nearly twice as likely to win at Churchill Downs as those who finished second in those races, and nearly two-and-a-half times as likely to finish Top-3 in the Run For the Roses. They also scored more than twice as many Derby points1 per race as a second-place finisher in its last prep:
That being said, even finishing Top-3 in the last previous prep race is a positive indicator. While second- and third-place horses were less successful in Kentucky than winners, they at least competed hard and/or won some of the time, with roughly 87 percent of winners since 1973 finishing Top-3 in at least one of the seven major tracked preps leading up to the Derby. Horses who finished no better than fourth — or exclusively came through lesser preps — only made up seven of 53 winners (13 percent) in that span.
In other words, having a Top-3 finish under your belt is basically table stakes to be a serious Derby contender, with only a few historical exceptions. Since 2018, there’s even been a trend whereby horses who finish exactly third in their last prep win more often (5.5 percent) than last-prep winners (1.8 percent) — though that is likely small-sample noise, given how clearly the pre-2018 data favored winners.
Either way, this is why each of the Top 11 horses in the odds finished Top-3 in their previous outing, as well as 15 of the Top 16 — Bob Baffert’s Litmus Test being the only exception. This category may even be a flag of some color for the speed-rating darling Chief Wallabee, the only member of that Top 11 to finish as low as third place (though he did it at that blistering 121 speed figure behind Commandment and The Puma at the Florida Derby).
🐎 Not all prep races are created equal.
Loyal readers will know that, at this very Substack back in March, Neil dug into the historical records for each of the seven biggest Triple Crown prep races along the Road to the Kentucky Derby — the so-called “Super Six” (Florida Derby, Arkansas Derby, Louisiana Derby, Santa Anita Derby, Blue Grass Stakes, Wood Memorial Stakes), plus the Jeff Ruby Steaks — to see which correlated with performance at the Kentucky Derby (as well as the rest of the Triple Crown) the most.
For the details, go back and read that entire piece, but the TL;DR is that Florida has the best record, with its winners going on to win the Derby roughly 19 percent of the time (no other prep was higher than 11 percent) and by far the strongest correlation in finishing success between the two races. The Santa Anita was next-best in each metric, and the Wood Memorial was probably No. 3 overall.
The rest of the preps were fairly mixed, with Louisiana featuring a strong performance correlation but low win rate, the Jeff Ruby and Blue Grass sitting worse on correlation but better on win rate, and Neil’s own home-state race, the Arkansas Derby, sitting dead-last on correlation with a middling win rate.
The Florida Derby’s track record is more reason to be high on Commandment, The Puma and Chief Wallabee, while So Happy, Potente and Intrepido came from a solid background at the Santa Anita Derby as well.
But the current odds — which list Renegade as a 9-2 favorite at Churchill Downs — might be too high on the Arkansas Derby winner, based on its status as one of the weakest predictors among prep races. Those odds imply an 18.2 percent chance of winning the Kentucky Derby; that’s more than three times the historical Derby win rate (5.6 percent) for former Arkansas winners in our sample of data. Conversely, the odds might be too low on Albus, a 50-1 longshot who captured the Wood Memorial earlier this month. Historically, Wood Memorial champions go on to win in Louisville about 9.3 percent of the time, well above the 2 percent chance the odds imply.
🐎 Winning from midfield is tough.
The eternal debate around any horse race — and the Kentucky Derby in particular — is whether it’s better to be a front-runner, a stalker who runs behind the leaders, or a closer who waits until the final sequence to make a mad sprint to the front.
To that question, we thought this research from TwinSpires’ J. Keeler Johnson was so interesting that we had to fit it into our rules of thumb somehow. In it, he went back through all Derbies since 2000 and tracked where a winning horse spent his time within the field during the race — was it mostly toward the front of the pack, mostly in the middle, or toward the back at some point before making a charge?
He found that, 77 percent of the time, winners came from one of two “extreme” ends of the field: they either ran among the Top 5 the whole race (if not winning gate-to-wire, though that’s becoming more difficult to do), or dropped back to the bottom 5 at one point before eventually racing to the front. That’s been especially true in recent years, as an “extreme” horse of some type has won 11 of the past 13 Derbies.
The frontrunners were slightly more common in this regard across the whole sample, making up 42 percent of winners, but we might expect that just based on faster horses setting an early pace to their liking — and avoiding the chaotic traffic we mentioned earlier. Arguably the more interesting result is a 35 percent share of winners for those who ran in the back, 1.5 times the share for those who tried to make the winning move from midfield (23 percent). That’s counter-intuitive, but it speaks to the power of the closer — horses like Rich Strike, Orb or Sovereignty last year, who drafted off the rest of the field to save energy and then surged past everyone after the final turn.
🐎 Post positions matter — but only so much.
During the weekend leading up to the Derby itself, all eyes are on the gate-assignment draw which determines post positions in the Run For the Roses. Afterwards, bettors and pundits will obsess over who received a favorable or unfavorable draw, based on historical success rates from each position — and these certainly can move the odds and change perceptions around a horse’s perceived potential:
It’s easy to get hung up on overanalyzing gate assignments, especially for fans of Further Ado, one of this year’s favorites pushed into the famously winless Post 17 due to a scratch. Post data spans 96 years, but we have to remember that it still only represents one race per year per position. So the difference between a 5 percent and 10 percent win rate — i.e., one of the worst and one of the best draws — is about 5 wins across the entire century’s worth of sample. It’s telling that post position win rates explain only about 6 percent of the variation in the implied probabilities for the horses in this year’s field.
That being said, there is probably something to the idea that inside posts have become harder to win from in modern 20-horse fields: we haven’t seen a winner from posts 1-2 in more than 40 years. This is bad news for both Renegade and Albus — though if any jockey can manage the crowded pack and win regardless, Renegade certainly has the right mount in Irad Ortiz, Jr., one of the world’s best (even if he’s never won a Kentucky Derby before).
🐎 Putting it all together...
So, where does that leave us for this year’s field?
Renegade is your betting favorite, though he comes to Louisville with some headwinds: His speed figures are not quite as strong as the other frontrunners, he came from the historically underpowered Arkansas Derby prep, and he drew a tough gate assignment by the rail. He did win his last race, however, and he fits the profile of a deep closer who’ll have success if he can get a clear path late.
Speed-wise, it’s hard to argue against Chief Wallabee, who may have the highest ceiling of any horse in the ‘26 field and comes from the Florida pipeline. However, he only ran 3 preps — Derby horses with so few on their PP form have just a 14 percent Top-5 rate, 3.4 times less than horses with 5 preps like Renegade. A more proven contender with nearly as much speed (and a head-to-head win over Chief Wallabee in their last race) is Commandment, who edged out The Puma at the Florida Derby. Both horses are serious threats to win Saturday.
As are So Happy and Further Ado, winners of the Santa Anita and Blue Grass, respectively. So Happy has better average speed and emerged from the stronger predictor prep, while Further Ado has a higher peak; both are running on 28 days of rest. There’s the wild card of Danon Bourbon, who doesn’t have speed figures in our data but ran historically fast in Japan. And two more horses are near the top tier in speed figures: Emerging Market, who won the Louisiana Derby and will begin from position 14 out of the gate, and a horse who needs two more scratches to actually even make the field — Corona de Oro.
(That last one is a little off-the-wall, admittedly, but we had to mention his impressive HRN speed figures of 119 on average and a 129 peak. That sets him clear of the next group featuring Potente, Pavlovian, Golden Tempo and Litmus Test.)
Based on the historical data, a handful of horses have the right statistical profile to win the Kentucky Derby — but that same data says the rest of the crowded pack could blow it all up anyway. In other words: We can narrow the field, but we can’t solve it. And it wouldn’t be fun if we could. All we can do is follow the rules of thumb, place our wagers, and then leave the rest to fate and fortune.
(Nick Devlin is a data editor and reporter, formerly of ESPN and CBS News. Originally from Monmouth, Illinois, he now lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughter.)
Filed under: Horse Racing
According to a simple 3-2-1 scoring system for Top-3 finishers, where all other horses received zero points.
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