Booked vs. Twinkle Town: The Rivalry Kicking Off the 2027 Derby Trail

Published on: August 9, 2026

By: Miles HenryFact Checked

Booked dominated the Sanford by 6 lengths. Three weeks later, Twinkle Town beat him wire to wire in the Saratoga Special. Two early Derby storylines, already colliding, before most fans are even thinking about next spring. From an ownership perspective, though, August isn’t about picking a Derby favorite – it’s about figuring out which of these young horses actually has the foundation to keep improving into next year.

Here’s what I’m seeing as an owner watching the early 2027 Kentucky Derby prospects develop, and why I’m not ready to crown anybody yet.

The 2026 Saratoga Juvenile Season So Far

Saratoga runs three marquee stakes for 2-year-olds every summer – the Sanford, the Saratoga Special, and the Hopeful – and only four horses in the race’s long history have ever swept all three, most recently City Zip in 2000. Two of those three have already run this year.

Booked and Twinkle Town: A Rivalry Taking Shape

Booked has done the early running. He debuted second at Churchill Downs on April 28, broke his maiden at Saratoga on June 7, then broke sharply and wired the Sanford field on July 4 in 1:11.24 for a career-best 85 Beyer, according to NYRA’s own coverage. The thing I pay attention to with a young horse like Booked isn’t just the margin – it’s whether he did it easily or had to be pushed to get there.

Beating a field by 6 wire-to-wire tells you he had cruising speed to spare, not just a hot pace that fell apart in front of him. Trainer Steve Asmussen, who also developed Booked’s sire Yaupon into a two-time Saratoga graded winner, put it simply afterward: “He’s bigger than Yaupon was at this same stage. I think we’ve seen progression in his three races.”

Twinkle Town flipped the script in the Saratoga Special on Aug. 1 – and the way he did it matters more than the final margin. According to NYRA’s race coverage, McPeek had actually planned to test whether Twinkle Town could rate off the pace, but both Booked and Flight Command had trouble at the start, and Ortiz wasn’t going to give up the advantage. “I broke better than [Booked] and was much faster than [Flight Command], so I just let him do his thing,” Ortiz said.

Twinkle Town went straight to the front, shrugged off pressure from a rushed-up Booked, and drew off to win by 6, wire to wire, in 1:16.44 for an 88 Beyer – three points sharper than Booked’s Sanford number. That’s not nothing. A jump like that from one start to the next tells you the horse is still figuring out how good he is, which is exactly the kind of horse you want to keep watching. McPeek himself raised the question every Derby-minded connection eventually has to answer: “I think he is definitely a two-turn horse, but we’re going to have to retool him a little bit at the end of the year or later in the year into next year.”

What I found interesting: Watch the two replays back to back and the internal fractions make the point better than the final times do. Twinkle Town went through the opening quarter in 21.82 and the half in 45.26 — both faster splits than Booked ran in the Sanford (21.96 and 45.64) — and he still had an extra half-furlong to cover before the wire. Booked’s entire race, at the shorter distance, went in 1:11.24. Twinkle Town covered more ground and got there faster doing it. That’s a bigger gap than the three-point Beyer difference alone suggests.

Asmussen didn’t make excuses, and he confirmed the fractions were legitimate without anyone asking him to: “He didn’t break great, they went 21-and-4, what do you think he went? He’s a solid horse, but a good horse won. That horse ran great. Times aren’t yielding what he just did today.” Booked broke somewhat slowly, chased the whole way, and simply couldn’t get to a horse that never let him in.

Asmussen didn’t make excuses: “He’s a solid horse, but a good horse won.” Booked broke somewhat slowly, chased the whole way, and simply couldn’t get to a horse that never let him in. That’s a genuinely different story than “Booked got beat” – he ran his race and still lost to a better one on the day.

There’s a real storyline behind Twinkle Town’s connections, too. He’s owned by 4G Racing and the Gasaway family – the same connections behind 2024 Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan – with Ken McPeek involved in developing both horses. McPeek’s résumé alone is worth knowing: Mystik Dan gave him the Derby, Swiss Skydiver won him the 2020 Preakness, and Sarava was his long-shot Belmont winner back in 2002 – he’s now won all three legs of the Triple Crown as a trainer, just not with the same horse.

That connection means something to me, too: I own a son of Goldencents myself, the same sire behind Mystik Dan, so I’ve had my own small window into what that bloodline can produce. None of that guarantees anything for Twinkle Town, but it’s the kind of operation that’s been through this exact process before and knows what it’s building toward.

Horses Who Could Still Improve

How’s Al Today ran a competitive third in the Saratoga Special after rallying from well back in his debut win – that running style, closing ground rather than needing the lead, is often the profile that actually improves with more distance, since he’s already shown he doesn’t need to be on top to win.

Flight Command is the harder one to read. He went off as the beaten favorite, and it didn’t work out – he stumbled at the start and never got comfortable. “He broke poorly and after that he never got comfortable,” jockey Flavien Prat said. “After the start, it was a scramble.” That’s a rough trip more than a bad performance, and worth remembering before writing him off. He’s also a son of last year’s champion Flightline, and first-crop runners by a stallion with that profile draw real attention regardless of how any single race goes. I’d want to see him break cleanly once before drawing any real conclusion either way.

Rasasi and Uncle Kef both filled out the Special’s field without threatening the top two. Neither looked like more than a minor player at this stage, but early speed figures can shift fast at 2, and neither has shown enough yet to rule out completely.

How Horsemen Evaluate a Derby Prospect in August

The final time and the margin are what shows up in the chart. What actually matters more, this early, is harder to put in a box:

Professionalism: Did the horse relax and rate, or fight the rider the whole way? A colt who’s already professional at 2 tends to handle the grind of a full 3-year-old campaign better than one who’s just faster than everybody else right now.
How he wins, not just that he wins: A wire-to-wire win with speed in reserve tells you something different than a horse who had to be niggled along to hold on. Twinkle Town’s Special looked like the former.
Whether the trip explains the result: A bad start or traffic trouble can bury a genuinely good performance in the chart. That’s exactly why I’m not writing off Flight Command off one bad break.
Pedigree and physical maturity: Does the horse’s body and breeding suggest he’ll get two turns and a mile and a quarter, or does he look like a pure sprinter who peaked early? That question doesn’t get answered in August – it gets answered in the winter.

Why 2-Year-Old Form Is a Guide, Not a Guarantee

Every year, a Saratoga standout gets treated like a settled Derby favorite in August, and most years the actual Derby field looks nothing like anyone predicted from summer form alone. The number that actually captures this: since the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile began in 1984, only two winners have gone on to win the following year’s Kentucky Derby – Street Sense (2006-07) and Nyquist (2015-16) – out of more than 40 runnings. That doesn’t mean juvenile success doesn’t matter. It means development matters more than a single August or November snapshot.

I know this firsthand. Last year I locked onto Ted Noffey as my early Derby pick – he won the Hopeful by 8 1/2 lengths, then added the Breeders’ Futurity and the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile to finish a perfect 4-for-4 and take home the Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male. He was the clear Derby favorite in the winter Future Wagers, the kind of horse you build an entire season of interest around. Then in January, a bone bruise ended his Triple Crown campaign before it ever started. He never made it to the starting gate in Louisville at all. That’s not a story about picking the wrong horse – he was the right horse, by every measure anyone had. It’s a reminder that a lot can happen between August and May that has nothing to do with talent.

What’s Next: The Hopeful and the Path to Kentucky

The Grade 1 Hopeful Stakes runs Sept. 6, closing out Saratoga’s juvenile trio. McPeek has indicated Twinkle Town is the likely target, though he’s also weighing the Grade 1 Champagne at Belmont on Oct. 3 as an alternative. A Booked-Twinkle Town rematch at the Hopeful would be one of the more compelling storylines of the summer, though plenty of 2-year-olds who haven’t shown up yet this season could still enter the picture before then.

From there, the calendar moves toward the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in the fall, followed by the winter and early spring Road to the Kentucky Derby points races that actually determine the 20-horse Derby field the following May. We’ll keep tracking this group as the meet wraps up and the picture gets clearer.

FAQs: 2027 Kentucky Derby Prospects

The Derby picture will change a dozen times before the first Saturday in May. That’s what makes watching these Saratoga 2-year-olds worth the trouble – you’re not trying to find the finished horse in August, you’re trying to recognize the one with the tools to still be improving next spring.