Chris: You are at least as serious a student of the Derby as most of the characters who have written books on the subject, but as one who is skeptical of mechanical rules which come up with either automatic winners or tosses, I have these Qs re the "no horse who has ever run below a 6 as a 2yr old has ever won the Derby" rule: (1) Am I correct in assuming that you are referring to TG nos.? (2) How many horses who have run sub-6s as a 2 yr old have actually run in the Derby? (3) Of those who have run, how many actually figured in terms of what we might call traditional handicapping?

I'm also curious about the input you used to run the model. What was your judgment regarding the possibility that WE would pair and/or run a race within 2pts of the 1, and was that judgment influenced by past pace & track bias considerations?