This post is brought to you by guest author Chris Hernandez from Giving My Ten Cents.

“Animal Who?” I said this as Animal Kingdom crossed to line to win this year’s Kentucky Derby. I was nowhere close to finding a winner in the race, nor was I close in any of the exotics. With the Preakness Stakes this weekend, the need to reassess what went wrong is key to moving on from the race. Here are a few of the things I am doing to help myself reset to help put the Derby behind me, and hopefully they can work for you when you need to put a race in the rear view mirror.

Figure out what went wrong: Many handicappers move on from a race they were wrong about without figuring out why, yet this is an important thing to do to prevent yourself from making the same mistakes over and over in the future. Personally, I tossed the winner altogether because I figured he would not run well on dirt. I ignored the strong appearance he was making in the morning at Churchill Downs and the fact that his sire had been throwing dirt runners from other seemingly “turfy” pedigrees, such as multiple graded stakes winner on dirt Always a Princess, who’s dam was a turf horse through and through. This reminded me not to just automatically toss a horse on any surface they have never run on before without checking others from the sire/dam. For you, this could be as simple as making sure you have a good reason for not using a horse on a pick 4 “just because”.

The Derby is just one race: Now that the Derby is over, just treat it as another race. The build-up for it is massive, but once it is over, there is an empty spot in many of us. To fill that void, just remember that is only one race, and there is another race coming up soon to play on. Don’t overvalue the efforts of those coming out of the Derby just because they are coming out of it. Just because Dialed In came home sub :48 for the final half still doesn’t excuse the fact that he finished 8^th. Conversely, just becase Animal Kingdom romped home doesn’t mean he is suddenly leaps and bounds above the rest of this group. Treat the Derby as just another race, nothing more

The most important thing to remember is…

FORGET EVERYTHING! Forget the fact that you did badly on whatever race you were completely wrong about and move on. That may sound contradictory to the first bit of advice I suggested, but one can learn from a mistake, then let the mistake go. If you let the race stay with you on and on, it will affect every part of your handicapping, especially when one of the runners you were wrong about is running in the race. I’ll need to let go of the Derby by the time I take a look at the Preakness PPs, otherwise my chances to cash are surely doomed.

So there is some advice on letting a poor job of handicapping go by the wayside. Hopefully it will get you passed a rough spot on the road to a big score.

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