Kentucky Derby: Trainer Plesa gets second shot with Itsmyluckyday
It has taken 14 years, but trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. is back in the Kentucky Derby, this time with the colt Itsmyluckyday.
David GreningMay 02, 2013
It has taken 14 years, but trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. is back in the Kentucky Derby, this time with the colt Itsmyluckyday.
Apollo gets mentioned whenever there's a Kentucky Derby contender who didn't compete as a juvenile - like Verrazano, one of this year's favorites. Apollo won the race in 1882 and remains the only Derby winner without any starts at 2.
Of the 21 jockeys named to ride this Derby, Victor Lebron is one of six first-timers, along with Kevin Krigger (Goldencents), Ryan Moore (Lines of Battle), Luis Saez (Falling Sky), Elvis Trujillo (Itsmyluckyday), and Jose Espinoza (Giant Finish).
The Mansion, a posh new invitation-only amphitheater six floors over Churchill’s finish line, caters to A-listers, oligarchs, and monarchs who are tired of slumming it on Millionaire's Row.
Rob Hyland, who produces the broadcast for NBC Sports Network, says Gary Stevens - who will be aboard Oxbow in the Kentucky Derby and Silsita in the Oaks - is “still part of the team” and will play a unique role in the network’s 14 1/2 hours of coverage.
From the mid-1990s right through to the first blush of the new century, it was beginning to look like California horses had a lock on the Kentucky Derby, but the Derbies of the last decade have smiled rarely on horses from the Left Coast. On the 2013 Derby trail, horse after horse from California fell by the wayside; Goldencents, winner of the Santa Anita Derby and the Sham Stakes for trainer Doug O'Neill, is the last one standing.
Under other circumstances, a horse listed at 50-1 on the morning line often implies a hapless no-hoper whose odds might well soar above the 99-1 mark, but, for whatever reasons, that sure hasn’t been the case with the Kentucky Derby in recent years.
For most of the horses in this year’s Kentucky Derby field, the road to the starting gate went through the auction ring, and often at a fairly modest price.
As warm-up acts go, they don’t come any better than the race preceding the Kentucky Derby Saturday at Churchill Downs – the Grade 1, $500,000 Woodford Reserve, a race that drew reigning Horse of the Year Wise Dan and Point of Entry, a four-time Grade 1 winner on turf.
Here it is, Kentucky Derby Day, and some Future Wager players are sitting in a better spot than others.