Steven Crist

Commingled handle on Saturday's Kentucky Derby Day card was up $2.1 million (1.33 %) from 2010 despite a $1.1 million drop in bets on, or ending with, the Derby itself. Handle for the 13-race card totalled $161.1 million, up from $159.0 in 2010. (This includes all money merged into he parimutuel pools with the exception of the two-day Oaks/Derby double and Oaks/Turf Classic/Derby pick-3, for which reliable figures are as yet unavailable.)

11:30 a.m.: Happy Derby Day, where the first headline was " 'Uncle' Romps at Churchill" -- not the scratched Uncle Mo in the Derby, alas, but Uncle Pink, a runaway winner of the opener, a starter-allowance for 3-year-olds who have raced for a $25k tag.

12:15 pm: Wake up already. It may be only 9:15 am in California, but they've already run the first four races on the Kentucky Oaks card, and it's just a little more than an hour until the first of six straight stakes races at Churchill Downs, culminating with the $1 million Kentucky Oaks at 5:45 p.m.

 It's later than you think: First post Friday for the 12-race Kentucky Oaks card is 10:30 a.m. and the first of the day's three pick-4's starts half an hour later with the second race at 11 a.m. Here's a snapshot of the Oaks and Derby cards -- a total of 25 races, 11 of those graded stakes including four Grade 1's, and there are two pick-6's, two pick-5's and seven pick-4's over the two days:  

It was only a few years ago that Kentucky Derby entrants who had not run a triple-digit Beyer Speed Figure were widely dismissed as outsiders. Giacomo went off as the 14th choice at 52-1 in 2005 in part because his best Beyer coming into the race was a 98. This year, a 98 is the fastest last-out figure in the field.