It’s finally here: Derby week! In a sense, the entire Derbyologist Triple Crown fantasy league has been building up to this season. There have been tons of points races over the last few months, but the biggest ones are still to come. The horses in my stable have changed a bit since my last update, though they’re ready to hit the ground running: one of my new horses has already won a race, and two more are in the starting gate for the Kentucky Oaks this Friday.
I am still stressing out about how I ordered Please Explain, Stopchargingmaria, and Conquest Titan in my drops, which ended up meaning something because I only ended up getting three of my five claims. I kept Stopchargingmaria and Conquest Titan, since I am so leery of Please Explain after the medication violation and then the poor run in the Fantasy that I thought Stopchargingmaria and Conquest Titan were less of a risk should either point to a minor race for the league. I knew Please Explain was working at Churchill Downs. However, I misunderstood how the points system worked, and thought points were required to enter a horse in the Derby or Oaks. However, that isn’t the case: they’re preferred. If not enough horses with points enter the race, anyone can. If I had understood that, I’d have interpreted Please Explain’s Churchill works for what they ended up being: crumbs leading toward a surprise entry in the Kentucky Oaks.
For Please Explain’s sake, I’m still worried about this move. I hope whatever was hurting her, whatever led to her being medicated, has been healed. I hope she runs well, and strikes a long-shot blow for the awesomeness of Curlin babies. For my fantasy stable’s stake, I feel really dumb for not understanding the points rule correctly, and may have ranked differently had I understood the rule. That said, I feel I made the best ranking decision I could have at the time, given my assessment of the situation.
With that out of the way, let’s check in on my stable:
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