Sports tend to be one area of the world where superlatives are tossed around far too often and, in some cases, without merit.

Yet Saturday's Kentucky Derby has taken shape as one spot where an observer can venture out onto the proverbial limb without fear of it being cut down.

It can be said, with some statistics to back it, that this just might be the best field ever assembled for the Run for the Roses in terms of overall quality and accomplishment. That's quite a statement in regard to a race approaching its 141st edition, yet the numbers speak for themselves.

Going back to 1955, this is the only Derby to have as many as five U.S.-based entrants who are undefeated at 3 years old.

Statistics were unavailable beyond that year, yet considering the smaller fields, amount of times horse ran at 3 prior to the Derby, and the paucity of stakes in that era, it's unlikely any of those Derbys featured five horses who were perfect at 3. Only once from 1955 through 1977 were there as many as three horses undefeated at 3 in a single Derby.

The key element here, of course, is to view a Derby by the qualifications of its horses before the race, not by what horses did after the first Saturday in May. Using hindsight, the 1973 Derby with Secretariat, Sham and Forego is pretty tough to top.

Nor can you confuse top-heavy with depth. Races with Affirmed and Alydar, or Sunday Silence and Easy Goer, or Swaps and Nashua are hard to top. What separates this year from those editions is the number of horses with spotless records at 3, leaving it to the imagination at this point to project just how good each of them can be.

To better understand how unusual this year has turned out to be, only a year ago there was one Derby starter undefeated at 3, the victorious California Chrome. In addition, looking at the 23 individual betting options in the November 2013 first edition of the 2014 Derby Future Wager, only one of them made it to the starting gate at Churchill Downs.

This year, in stark contrast, the first future wagering period was conducted in November and eight of the 23 individual options are expected to be entered in the Derby on Wednesday. Reflective of the quality of those horses, if you took every other member of that crop in the 300-horse mutual field, your best hope for cashing in on the 3-5 odds you received in November rests with the likes of International Star, Firing Line, Materiality and Mubtaahij.

Each year, attrition plays a key role in sapping the quality from a Derby field, yet in 2015 the only major player among the missing is Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner Texas Red. Even this year's lucky charm is not strong enough to overcome that nasty jinx.

This year's Derby, though, will include the reigning 2-year-old champ, American Pharoah, who has not tasted defeat in 2015, and the winners of these major preps who are also undefeated this year: the Santa Anita Derby (Dortmund), Florida Derby (Materiality), Blue Grass (Carpe Diem), Arkansas Derby (American Pharoah) and Louisiana Derby (International Star). Combined, the Fab Five is 13-0 in 2015.

To get that many horses who have been able to win major stakes and sidestep an upset or two along the way on the Road to Louisville is simply unprecedented.

Making the field even more impressive is a collection of talented horses who have finished directly behind the Fab Five.

There's Firing Line; he lost by a head to Dortmund, who is undefeated in his six-race career, in both the Los Robert B. Lewis and Los Alamitos Futurity. Then, without Dortmund on hand, he won the Sunland Derby by a mere 14 lengths.

There's Upstart, who won the Holy Bull, was disqualified from first to second in the Fountain of Youth, and finished second to Materiality in the Florida Derby.

There's Dubai shipper Mubtaahij, who, unlike some Derby starters from that region who raced once or twice at 3, has a solid body of work this year with three wins in four 2015 starts, topped by an 8-length score in the UAE Derby on dirt.

There's also Frosted, who finally realized his potential in winning the Wood Memorial. Overall, of the 20 prospective starters as of Monday, 13 are graded stakes winners and the other seven include horses with worthy credentials like Stanford, who was second to International Star and Materiality in his past two races, respectively, and Far Right, who won two graded stakes to start 2015 and then finished second to American Pharoah in the Arkansas Derby -- albeit a distant second.

From top to bottom, it's an outstanding field that figures to put on a great show -- perhaps one that Mayweather and Pacquiao will be hard-pressed to top later that night -- and present a headache for handicappers. With so many quality horses who have yet to face each other, there's no telling what will happen when they all come together on the same racetrack and battle it out in a congested 20-horse field at a mile-and-a-quarter distance that's new to them.

The natural assumption is that in such a contentious crop, the likelihood of one horse winning all three legs of the Triple Crown is slim. There promises to be no layups in the Preakness or Belmont Stakes.

Yet unless something whacky happens -- like a suicidal pace that consumes most of the top contenders -- the horse that hits the wire first in this hellacious edition of the Run for the Roses just might be something special. He could be the one gifted enough to end a 37-year Triple Crown drought.

After all, a case could be made that this year's Derby winner turns out to be the best of the best.