I often see the Haskell maligned as a prep for the Travers, so I wanted to see for myself if that reputation was well deserved or not. I looked at all of the horses that prepped in the Haskell and then went directly into the Travers since 2000. I excluded the pandemic year of 2020 and there were two years where there were no entrants from the Haskell running in the race. I also looked at the same data for horses going the Belmont Stakes to Travers route. I will just present the findings here and leave it up to the reader to draw their own conclusions. One could strongly argues that the sample siz is very small and has little meaning.

Since 2000, horses going from the Haskell to Travers prep have a record of 44-3-7-7. There were 22 years where at least one horse from the Haskell entered directly into the Travers. In those 22 years we saw only 3 winners with 17 in the money finishes total. I thought it might be interesting to just compare the finishing position of those horses entered in both races. It is a somewhat simplistic analysis as it does not include any figures and does not consider any other variables such as odds or track conditions, but it does provide an interesting view of those two races.

Of the 44 horses coming from the Haskell, 8 improved their finishing position in the Travers including 2 of the winners. Summer Bird ran 5th in the Haskell and then went on to win the Travers, while Keen Ice reversed his second place finish to American Pharoah in the Haskell. Only 4 horses ran to the same finishing position in the Travers off the Haskell prep including Point Given, who was the only horse in the sample to win both races. That means that everyone else had a lower finishing position in the Travers when compared to their Haskell performance. In terms of raw numbers, 32 of the 44 horses that went from the Haskell to the Travers ended up with a worse finishing position in the Travers - that is about 73%. So historically, about three-fourths of the time horses coming out of the Haskell end up with a worse finishing position in the Travers.

Arcangelo came directly out of the Belmont to win the Travers as did Birdstone in 2004. Since 2000 (not including 2020 pandemic year) the Belmont to Travers prep has a record of 8-2-0-3 (there were only 6 years where there was at least one horse from the Belmont entered directly into the Travers). This makes it a relatively rare phenomenon, which means the sample size is quite small. In this case, 3/4 of the horses improved on their Belmont finish or ended up with the same placing as they had in the Belmont (6/8). Only 1/4 (2/8) had a worse finish than they did in the last jewel of the Triple Crown.

In that same time span, horses coming out of the Jim Dandy compiled a record of 80-11-8-10. There were 209 total runners in the Travers from 2000-2023. The number of Travers winners from other preps since 2000 was 77-8-7-3. From the other category, there were a variety of races that produced winners including the Kentucky Derby undercard, Belmont Invitational Derby, Curlin, Dwyer and four Southern California preps.

Travers Cumulative Record of Horses Coming Directly from…
Jim Dandy = 80-11-8-10
Haskell = 44-3-7-7
Belmont = 8-2-0-3
Other = 77-8-7-3

Percentage Winners from Prep Directly into the Haskell (24 winners total in the sample as there was a dead heat in 2012)
Jim Dandy - 11 winners = 46%
Haskell - 3 winners= 13%
Belmont - 2 winners = 8%
Other Races - 8 winners = 33%

Totals for Travers Starters from Each Race
80/209 came from Jim Dandy (38% of starters, 46% of the winners)
44/209 came from Haskell (21% of the starters, 13% of the winners)
8/209 came from Bemont (4% of the starters, 8% of the winners)
77/209 came from some other race (37% of the starters, 33% of the winners)