Derby lexicon: BANNED edition

About a week ago, Chris Hernandez of @tencentcielo fame on Twitter asked me, "What is your favorite English word?" I didn't answer him at the time, but I've settled on "lexicon" in part because it's the title of one of my favorite songs written in the past few years, but mostly because I like the idea of a collection of words being part of something bigger.

To me, Lexicon is sort of the academic word for "inside joke."

As early as sixth grade, I can remember gravitating toward friends who enjoyed sharing a lexicon. Words like "ghee" and "zobol" took on special meaning to me and Nate Jun in Kathy Krupar's class. I became friends with Joe "J Diddy" Jasinski in junior high, and our lexicon became one of anagrams for the baseball-style games we made up: BFFG was batting fielding fence game; HRDPG was home run derby point game; BTL was bunt tap lefty. (We also took cups out of the trash and washed them so we could get "free refills" at Booger Snot [a.k.a. Burger King], but that's another story).

And so on and so forth through high school, college, and into my professional life where my coworkers and I often reminisce about Global Gait gate, LTBs (lifetime bans), and other such juvenile pursuits.

Racing, of course, has a rich lexicon, which makes it seem cool to insiders but foreboding to those who don't understand. Wheels, across the board, chalk, boat race, furlong, and quinella are just a few of the crazy word/phrases race fans have at their disposal that the public at large generally does not understand. Heck, I can't even find an agreed upon spelling of quiniela.

The Kentucky Derby lexicon is a subset of the racing lexicon, and it's time for some spring cleaning. So, in the spirit of Lake Superior State University's list of banished words, here are my nominations for words/terms I'd like seen banned from the Kentucky Derby lexicon:

Weak crop

• There is no such thing as a weak crop. It's all relative. The horse with the greatest raw talent to have ever lived may have died as a weanling or yearling or never made it to the races because of a training accident.
• I'm not one of those "a foal has a 35,000-to-1 chance of winning the Kentucky Derby" kind of people, but I do think that "stat" has some merit in showing the general public how hard it is to get a horse to even compete at this level.
• I'm willing to allow that year-to-year some Derby fields may appear more talented than others on paper, but as Jennie Rees says, "There are no bad Derbys; some are just better than others." The crop itself is never weak, though. When viewed from 10,000 feet and the idea of there being tens of thousands of mares in production, there is little turnover in bloodstock. Sometimes better horses make it to the races in some years, but the quality of the CROP generally stays consistent year to year

Dosage/dual qualifiers

• I'm all about quantifying things using a numbers approach (e.g. Ragozin, Thorograph, etc.), and I have no problem with the Dosage theory. My issue is that if this is some almighty rosetta stone in unlocking the secrets of classic breeding/performance, then why don't we ever hear about dosage in relation to the Belmont Stakes or Travers Stakes or Breeders' Cup Classic or a horse stretching out on turf for the first time, etc.? It seems that if dosage were such a predictor then everyone would be clamoring for the data before other big-time distance events. Until that happens, I have a hard time buying into it as a Derby insider.

Turn 3; turn 4

• The Churchill Downs oval has two turns, the first turn and the second turn. Quit trying to make it like NASCAR, which mercifully racing is not. Notice that this is the third point I've made that somewhat swivels on the idea that we only mention these things around Derby time. They open the infield at Santa Anita and Oaklawn, but I've never heard about turns 3 or 4 at either of those places.

For sure, the Kentucky Derby is the most prestigious race in the country and its rich tradition deserves its own tradition-rich vocabulary, but I wouldn't mind seeing the above words and terms—especially in relation to the Derby—go the way of the dodo, or "shovel-ready."