Kentucky Derby Road: Audible Makes Noise but Mendelssohn Is A Monster

By Derek Simon

On the Kentucky Derby road, some contenders have switched gears and moved into the fast lane, while others have hit speed bumps or made pit stops that have allowed rivals to pass them by. There are plenty of highs and lows and peaks and valleys in the months leading up to the running of the Kentucky Derby and never was that more true than this year when the calendar flipped over from March to April.

On the weekend of the Florida Derby, just five weeks out from the Run for the Roses, the biggest news of the day on the 3-year-old scene did not happen at Gulfstream Park. Rather, it was a seismic shift in the Kentucky Derby landscape that occurred halfway around the world when Mendelssohn destroyed the field in the U.A.E. Derby in Dubai to serve notice that he, in fact, is the horse to beat at Churchill Downs on Saturday, May 5.

Yes, on the same day that Todd Pletcher’s favored Audible crushed a good field in the Florida Derby, it was Mendelssohn’s star that… (more)