Pyro gets burned

So what happened to Pyro Saturday as the heavy favorite in the Blue Grass Stakes? Was it an inability to handle the Polytrack, or was he just due for a bad race, or was he incubating a virus? It's hard to say, but he didn't fire at all at Keeneland, and his never-involved 10th-place finish will push up his odds 2 or 3 points on Derby Day.

“He just didn’t give me the same run he has,” jockey Shaun Bridgmohan said. “I asked him for run around the turn to try and set myself up pretty good and I didn’t get the response I was hoping for. I realized on the turn that it just wasn’t going to be his day. He usually gets himself traveling well by that point. He’s usually a pretty handy horse, and today he just wasn’t.”

If you have Future Wager tickets on Pyro, take solace in the knowledge that the Blue Grass has been the most misleading Derby prep in the past 30 years. Since 1978, only Spectacular Bid (1979) and Strike the Gold (1991) have pulled off the Blue Grass-Derby double, so think twice before boosting the chances of Monba and Cowboy Cal, Todd Pletcher's 1-2 Blue Grass finishers.

But although you can argue that Pyro's Blue Grass should be a throwout, Derby winners don't run that poorly in their final prep. In the past 15 years, only Giacomo (4th, 2005), Thunder Gulch (4th, 1995) and Sea Hero (4th, 1993) were out of the money in their last tuneup for the first Saturday in May. Since 1937, only two Derby winners -- Iron Liege (1957, 5th, Derby Trial) and Count Turf (1951, 5th, Wood Memorial) did worse than those three. You don't have to win your dress rehearsal, but performing miserably is a major concern.