LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The cast of characters for the 149th Kentucky Derby was rewritten in the days before the race. What didn’t change: Forte is the early 3-1 favorite on Saturday in a seemingly wide-open field of 19 horses.
Four horses were scratched — Practical Move, Lord Miles, Continuar and Skinner — and three horses waiting on the also-eligible list moved into the field. They are Cyclone Mischief, Mandarin Hero and King Russell.
Last year’s Derby was a stunner: 80-1 shot Rich Strike weaved his way through traffic and came rushing up the rail to win. NBC Sports’ overhead replay of the race was viewed more than 36 million times.
A crowd of about 150,000 is expected to jam Churchill Downs to wager and watch the 1 1/4-mile Derby. Post time is 6:57 p.m. EDT.
Forte breaks from the No. 15 post, which has produced six winners. The dark brown colt is trained by two-time Derby winner Todd Pletcher, who also has the second favorite in Tapit Trice, at 5-1.
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A horse heads to the track for a workout at Churchill Downs Thursday, May 4, 2023, in Louisville, Ky. The 149th running of the Kentucky Derby is scheduled for Saturday, May 6.
The Todd Squad includes Kingsbarns, and it’s an impressive trio.
Forte was last year’s 2-year-old champion and has six wins in seven career starts, including five in a row. Tapit Trice is 4 for 5 and Kingsbarns is 3 for 3.
“You could say it’s the deepest squad we’ve brought so far,” Pletcher said.
Louisville-born Brad Cox won his first Derby belatedly when Mandaloun was elevated to first place after Medina Spirit’s disqualification nine months after the 2021 race.
“There’s no thrill of winning the Derby through a phone call,” he said. “There’s no celebration, there’s no winning picture.”
Cox has a leading four chances to make the winner’s circle in person this year: early 8-1 third choice Angel of Empire; Hit Show; Verifying; and Jace’s Road.
“I’m sure it would be a feeling like no other,” he said.
Gary and Mary West, who own Hit Show, are seeking retribution of their own.
Their horse, Maximum Security, crossed the Derby finish line first in 2019, but was disqualified for interference after a 22-minute delay while stewards reviewed video. Country House was awarded the garland of red roses. The Wests sued unsuccessfully to have the stewards’ decision reversed.
“They would like to cross the wire first and stay up,” Cox said. “They got a really live crack. This colt is really doing well.”
A couple of jockeys are looking for similar satisfaction.
Kentucky Derby entrant Derma Sotogake, from Japan, works out at Churchill Downs Thursday, May 4, 2023, in Louisville, Ky. The 149th running of the Kentucky Derby is scheduled for Saturday, May 6.
Luis Saez rode Maximum Security in 2019 and received a 15-day suspension for interfering with others; he’s seeking his first Derby win aboard Tapit Trice. Florent Geroux, who was on Mandaloun, is on Jace’s Road.
For the second straight year, the Derby is without Bob Baffert. The Hall of Fame trainer with a record-tying six victories is soon to complete a two-year ban by Churchill Downs Inc. He was punished after Medina Spirit flunked a post-race drug test.
Baffert’s shadow still looms large over the Twin Spires. A colt previously trained by him, Reincarnate, will be in the starting gate.
Trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. found himself on the sideline after being indefinitely suspended Thursday by Churchill Downs Inc. His Derby entry, Lord Miles, was scratched. Two of Joseph’s horses died after races at the track in the days leading up to the Derby. No cause of death has yet been found.
New antidoping and medication rules to be enforced by the sport’s new central governing body won’t take effect until May 22, after the Derby and the Preakness.
Japan is represented by Derma Sotogake and Mandarin Hero, giving the nation two chances to win the Derby for the first time.
Derma Sotogake and Two Phil’s are the most experienced runners in the field, having made eight career starts.
“He has a lot of experience and it has made him tougher and tougher,” said Christophe Lemaire, who will ride Derma Sotogake. ”It is important to have that experience with 18 other horses in a high-level race.”
Confidence Game, a 20-1 shot, will try to win coming off an unheard of 10-week layoff.
Saturday’s forecast calls for partly sunny skies and a high of 77 degrees (25 Celsius).
How 81-1 shot Rich Strike won the Kentucky Derby
‘What planet is this?’
This doesn’t happen. Horses at odds of nearly 81-1 don’t win the Kentucky Derby. Jockeys who have never won any big stakes race of any kind don’t win the Kentucky Derby. Owners with fewer than 10 career wins don’t win the Kentucky Derby.
Rich Strike and his connections disagree with those sentiments.
One of the biggest upsets in racing history happened Saturday in the Kentucky Derby, when Rich Strike shocked the establishment by running past everyone and winning the first leg of this year’s Triple Crown series.
Those who bet $2 to win on Rich Strike got $163.60 in return. Not bad for about two minutes of work. For jockey Sonny Leon, trainer Eric Reed and owner Rick Dawson, the result was life-changing. Leon was racing Friday at a little-known track in Cincinnati called Belterra Park. Reed’s biggest win before Saturday was with a filly called Satans Quick Chick in a Grade 2 race nearly 12 years ago. Dawson, a half-hour or so after the Derby, rhetorically asked a question to anyone within earshot.
“What planet is this?” Dawson said.
Indeed, it’s a whole new world that he’s part of now. And a 3-year-old colt that was much closer to last place than first for most of the race Saturday made it all happen.
How did he even get in?
Good luck for him, bad luck for another. The Kentucky Derby can’t have more than 20 horses in the field. Rich Strike was 21st on the list. If one of the 20 horses that qualified didn’t scratch from the race before 9 a.m. Friday, Rich Strike’s Derby plan would have ended.
At 8:45 a.m. Friday, the call came: No scratches. Reed texted his father: “Didn’t happen.” The security guard working the barn and protecting Rich Strike was sent home. Plans were being made to run Rich Strike in a race this week in New York instead.
Around that time, the connections for Ethereal Road — trained by D. Wayne Lukas — told Derby officials that they were pulling out of the race. Reed got another call at 8:55 telling him not to move the horse, then another call a minute or two later with the official word.
They were in.
“What just happened?” Reed asked.
Turns out, history was starting to happen.
How did he win?
Think of the horses like race cars. There’s a finite amount of fuel in the tank. The faster you burn the fuel, the quicker the tank empties. And that’s exactly what happened in the Kentucky Derby.
Summer Is Tomorrow was the leader after a quarter-mile, or two furlongs. He covered that distance in 21.78 seconds — the fastest time in Kentucky Derby history. No horse can sustain that pace for 1 1/4 miles. And Summer Is Tomorrow wound up finishing last in the 20-horse field, 64 1/2 lengths behind Rich Strike.
It wasn’t just Summer Is Tomorrow. Many horses went out on a blistering pace, because so many trainers and jockeys had decided their best move was to get close to the lead for the opening portions of the race.
The biggest indicator that this was going to be a wild finish probably came when track announcer Larry Collmus briefly stopped his rundown of which horse was where in the field at the half-mile mark. “The opening half-mile was — WHOA! — blazing fast, 45.36 seconds,” Collmus said.
Those fuel tanks were emptying far faster than anticipated.
At that half-mile mark, Rich Strike was ahead of only two horses. He was sitting in 18th place.
How did Rich Strike pass so many horses?
Two answers: He ran by some, and some, as they say in racing, stopped running.
Technically, that last part isn’t true. All 20 horses were “running” when they crossed the finish line. Nobody “stopped.” But some simply ran out of gas, meaning their all-out sprints had become little more than a gallop or a jog.
Rich Strike had tons of fuel left. He also had one other major advantage: He was near the rail.
It’s simple math: The closer one is to the rail, the shorter of a distance one has to run. Most of the contending horses as the leaders turned into the stretch and headed home were fanned out wide across the track, moves that made their trips a bit longer.
This is where Leon had a huge decision to make. He had to get around Messier, one of the early leaders who was fading fast. Leon decided to veer slightly to his right and get around Messier, then dove back down toward the rail to finish Rich Strike’s run. It was almost as if nobody saw him coming.
They saw him at the end. That’s all that mattered.
How did handicappers get this so wrong?
If we knew that, everyone would have cashed their Derby tickets. Rich Strike had just one win coming into the race (though, in fairness, it was by 17 1/4 lengths, which is impressive regardless of the level of competition).
He’s a closer. He hadn’t won any of his last five races but made late moves in all of them, going from sixth to third, seventh to fifth, eighth to third, 11th to fourth and 11th to third. Passing horses down the stretch is apparently his favorite pastime. Handicappers definitely missed that.
But reputations also matter. Frankly, not many horseplayers knew who Leon was, or who Reed was, before Saturday.
They do now.
“It’s a horse race, and anybody can win,” Reed said. “And the toteboard doesn’t mean a thing.”
What’s next?
The Preakness is May 21 at Pimlico, and it would seem like Rich Strike will head there to see if he can move one win away from grabbing the most improbable Triple Crown ever.
“That’s probably the plan,” Reed said Sunday. “I’m not going to do a whole lot with him and I don’t like to run back quick. You get one like this in a lifetime and you have to protect him.”
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