The complexion of this year's Kentucky Derby may have changed immensely overnight with the news that likely favorite Omaha Beach was out of the race, but it was still business as usual for the rest of the field during training hours Thursday morning at Churchill Downs.
Assessing the pace situation in any race is a critical element of the puzzle known as handicapping, but it’s especially important in a race like the Kentucky Derby. Over the years, many horses with tactical speed have put themselves in ideal positions to sit and pounce before prevailing against their 3-year-old counterparts, but a stalking running style isn’t a prerequisite for Derby glory.
Unless Gray Magician, Master Fencer, and/or Bodexpress achieve such a dubious distinction, this will be the 18th straight year that a Derby starter fails to reach as high as 99-1 on the toteboard – and there's no way any of them will approach the Derby record for the highest odds.
As always, there are overlays and underlays for bettors who took a shot in any of the four pools in the 2019 Kentucky Derby Future Wager.The most obvious bargain came in Pool 2, where Tacitus – still nothing more than a maiden winner at that point – was 96-1. The eventual winner of the Tampa Bay Derby and Wood Memorial is 10-1 on the Churchill Downs morning line Saturday.
This is a Kentucky Derby that is perceived as having a number of top contenders, making this, on paper, a far more interesting Derby than recent vintages where there appeared to be a clear, strongly favored standout.
Omaha Beach, scratched Wednesday from the 145th Kentucky Derby on Saturday because of an entrapped epiglottis, will have surgery Thursday afternoon but should be back in action by the summer, trainer Richard Mandella said at Churchill Downs on Thursday morning.
Richard Mandella already had his name in the books as the only trainer to win four Breeders' Cup races in a single day, to finish in a dead heat with two of his horses in a Grade 1 event, and to train the only female in the history of the sport to win championships in four separate campaigns. Then he had to go and join an altogether different kind of club.
If allowed only one word to describe the 2019 Kentucky Derby, that word could be “parity.” Bob Baffert, who trains three of the favorites for this Derby – Game Winner, Roadster, and Improbable – used that descriptor in a recent media teleconference. And by many measures, the term fits.
Omaha Beach, the morning-line favorite for the 145th Kentucky Derby on Saturday at Churchill Downs, will be scratched owing to an entrapped epiglottis, trainer Richard Mandella said Wednesday.
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There is a winner's circle in the Churchill Downs infield that is used on one weekend a year. It is ringed by rose bushes in a horseshoe shape, calling to mind the garland of roses placed around the Kentucky Derby winner's neck when he steps into that circle.
