There's one quick way to describe what Fierceness did in the Florida Derby (G1).
"You can quote me as saying, 'He's fast,"' said Jerry Brown, founder and president of Thoro-Graph.
Indeed.
In winning the race that has produced the most Kentucky Derby (G1) winners (25), the Repole Stable homebred crossed the line 13 1/2 lengths in front in a blistering time of 1:48.22 for the mile-and-an-eighth.
That is surely fast. An unusually fast and dominant effort by a 3-year-old in a final prep for the opening leg of the Triple Crown.
But was it too fast?
While some may view horses as machines that can produce similar performances in every start, a key element in handicapping rests with deciding if a horse will match, improve upon, or bounce or regress from its previous race.
Often a horse will regress from a peak performance and that's one of the great handicapping mysteries surrounding the May 4 Run for the Roses. How will Fierceness react to a monstrous effort in the Florida Derby? Did he peak a race too soon? Will he bounce? Or is he a generational talent capable of becoming the 14th Triple Crown winner?
"The question is can he sustain it?" Brown said about the 5-2 morning-line favorite for the Kentucky Derby.
While the answer will not be known until around 7 p.m., May 4, renowned speed figure authorities Brown and Len Friedman, one of the founders of Ragozin Thoroughbred Data (a.k.a. The Sheets), were asked to frame the question of how Fierceness will run in the Kentucky Derby after posting such a huge effort for trainer Todd Pletcher five weeks ago.
"Big Brown ran a huge race and won the Derby," Brown said. "But a lot don't. Bellamy Road didn't."
With Thoro-Graph and Ragozin using a scale in which lower numbers are better, Big Brown won the 2008 Florida Derby with a Thoro-Graph figure of negative 3 1/2 and then took the Kentucky Derby by 4 3/4 lengths as the 2-1 favorite while posting a faster negative 4 3/4.
In 2005, Bellamy Road won the Wood Memorial Stakes (G1) by 17 1/2 lengths but finished seventh in the Kentucky Derby as the 5-2 betting choice.
Looking at Fierceness in the Florida Derby, he received a negative 3 1/4 from Thoro-Graph and a 4 3/4 from Ragozin. On Thoro-Graph, Fierceness earned the fastest United States number in a final Kentucky Derby prep since Big Brown.
But what must also be factored into judging his performance is that in his third and final race as a 2-year-old he won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile (G1) by 6 1/4 lengths in dazzling time.
On Thoro-Graph he earned a negative 1 1/2 and Ragozin gave him a 4 3/4 in the Juvenile.
"It is an enormous figure for an early-season 3-year-old," Brown said of the Florida Derby. "But what has gotten lost is that his last figure at 2 was also an enormous number."
Friedman said he was more impressed with Fierceness' Juvenile number given that it happened earlier in the son of City of Light 's career.
"This is a fast final prep number but not dramatically fast. It is just one of the fastest ones. Looking at the post-steroids and post-Lasix era, this is one of the best last-race numbers in recent years. But the impressive one was the number he ran in the Breeders' Cup. That was as fast as this one but he did it as a 2-year-old and that makes it more impressive."
According to Ragozin numbers, Fierceness' effort was similar to the 4 1/2 for Game Winner in his final 2019 prep. In the last eight years, nine horses have come into the Kentucky Derby off Ragozin numbers from 6 1/2-4 1/2.
While some handicappers believe Fierceness has a habit of running good races followed by weak ones, with numbers of 4 3/4 - 10 - 4 3/4 - 21 1/4 - 7 1/4 (most recent numbers first) in his five career starts, Friedman's opinion is that Fierceness is coming into the Kentucky Derby on a great pattern that bodes well for a big effort.
"It's a strong pattern. I see it as a strong condition move, pairing up the 2-year-old top in his second start as a 3-year-old. I think it's a positive move," he said. "I think some Sheets players might see him as a favorite and play him to bounce but all these reads in terms of patterns are percentage reads. I'd say he's 25% to repeat, 25% to go forward, and 50% to go backward."
An important consideration is that even if Fierceness regresses a bit, he could still win the mile-and-a-quarter classic because his number is much faster than his rivals.
"We haven't seen a situation like this in a while where his best race and the rest of the field's best race has this big of a gap," Brown said.
On Ragozin numbers, the two closest rivals for Fierceness in terms of last-race figures are Japan's Forever Young, the co-fourth choice at 10-1 with a 6 1/4 in the UAE Derby (G2), and 5-2 second choice Sierra Leone with an 8 in the Blue Grass Stakes (G1).
"If Fierceness repeats his number, if not for the Japanese horse I would say there's a very strong chance he wins. Forever Young is only a few points slower and he's a strong horse that has never done anything wrong. He has pretty good 2-year-old form, so I rate him as a big threat," Friedman said. "If I had to choose between Sierra Leone and Fierceness, it's not close to me. I'd go with Fierceness."
Both Friedman and Brown expect Fierceness to go off at odds of 5-2 or 2-1 but Friedman will not be swayed if the price drops.
"I'm certainly not betting against Fierceness," Friedman said. "Even if he was even money."
