Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem for Mar. 3, 2025

Jason discusses some of the Kentucky Derby prep winners but also some of the horses not to give up on just yet. 

A good Monday morning to you all! What a busy and fun weekend of preps on the way to the Kentucky Derby (G1) and Kentucky Oaks (G1).

I mentioned on my podcast last Thursday that I thought we’d have a much clearer picture of the Derby hierarchy coming up after this weekend, and I think that has certainly come to fruition. Certainly Journalism has to have jumped to the top of many people’s lists after his fantastic win in the San Felipe S. (G2) at Santa Anita. 

I remember a colleague and friend telling me one time, “I always look for horses who are passing another horse while they’re both running away from the rest of the field.” Essentially describing exactly what Journalism did in the San Felipe. He not only ran by a very talented horse in Barnes, but did it as they were both running away from the rest of the pack. Now you can question the strength of who they were running away from, but I think the time of the race and the eye test showed that it was a strong effort.  

I’ll be interested to see what happens with Barnes going forward. On these paths to the Oaks and Derby, people often are so quick to jump off when a horse gets beat. This was only his third career start and first start around two turns. Granted he had it go about as easy as possible up front, but he got run down by arguably the top horse in his class and only beaten 1 3/4 lengths. 

I feel like when horses like him get passed late, many start to think the distance is an issue. And maybe it will be, but it seems a bit premature to me to give up on him as a contender going forward in the Santa Anita Derby (G1), Arkansas Derby (G1), or wherever he ends up. 

In the Fountain of Youth (G2), I was quite high on River Thames going into the race and honestly still think a fair bit of him coming out of it. Yes he got beat, but he was another who was trying two turns for the first time, and also this was easily the toughest field he’s faced. The fact that he got caught late in a short stretch race isn’t great, but he also had reason to maybe not be at his peak yet in just career start number three. 

I’m curious to see what happens with him if he’s able to make the lead in a race. So far he’s generally come from just off the pace, but I wonder if he’d be better with nobody in front of him. Not sure we’ll see that as he doesn’t have amazing speed, but if he draws right going 1 1/8 miles, maybe they can send him after the front? 

Flood Zone’s win in the Gotham (G3), on second watching, impressed me a little more than it initially did. I feel like with Aqueduct (and this goes for several tracks), horses just don’t look like they’re going all that fast. Chillier weather, deeper or more tiring surface, camera that’s further panned out, I feel like they all can lead to races looking visually slower than they maybe actually are. 

Emerald Downs was always having track records get set, and I remember a friend always sarcastically saying, “We have the fastest horses in the country.” And on TV, the races looked fast, because they were. But some tracks just kind of look slow, and the Aqueduct main track has always had that effect for me. 

One of the cool parts of Flood Zone’s win was seeing jockey Reylu Gutierrez on board. We’ve had Rey on the show many times over the years, and it’s been so much fun to follow his career as he’s ridden through some ups and downs and ultimately started to compile a very solid journeyman resume. He’s always been such a good interview and rider, and wish him continued success with Flood Zone. 

Next stop on the Kentucky Derby trail is about 14 miles from my house. That’s right – it’s Tampa Bay Derby (G3) time, and I’ll write about that more in Thursday’s column.