Locked, Timberlake among top individuals listed in first pool of Kentucky Derby Future Wager
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Two of the leading contenders in Friday’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile among the 38 individual horses comprising the first Kentucky Derby Future Wager parimutuel pool, which will open on Tuesday and close on Thursday.
Locked, who is the 3-1 Daily Racing Form early morning-line favorite for the $2 million Juvenile, and Timberlake, who is the 7-2 co-second choice, are expected to draw the most interest among the 38 individuals in the pool, held six months before next year’s Kentucky Derby. Locked is listed at 15-1 on the early line posted by Churchill, while Timberlake is at 20-1.
But if past history is any guide, the overwhelming favorite will be the “all other colts and geldings” entry, comprising any horse not offered individually in the pool. The “all other colts and geldings” entry in this year’s first pool is listed as 3-5 on the morning-line. The pool also includes an “all other fillies” entry, listed at 80-1 on the morning line, bringing the total number of betting interests to 40.
Betting will open at noon Eastern on Tuesday and close at 6 p.m. Eastern on Thursday. The minimum bet is $2, and players can make both win bets and exacta bets. There are no refunds.
Twenty-four of the individual horses listed in this year’s pool have morning-line odds of 99-1, the highest that oddsmakers, by tradition, will write for a morning line. The final odds can be far higher than 99-1, however, whatever the parimutuel math requires.
While Locked and Timberlake are familiar names to those following the juvenile division, two other horses are conspicuously absent in the first Derby pool: Muth, who won the American Pharoah Stakes in his third start on Oct. 7 and is the 7-2 co-second-choice in the Juvenile, and Prince of Monaco, the winner of the Del Mar Futurity who is the 4-1 fourth choice in the Juvenile.
Muth and Prince of Monaco are both trained by Bob Baffert, who is banned from participating at Churchill tracks through the 2024 Derby. The ban precludes any horse trained by Baffert from earning points in any of the races that determine the field for the Derby.
Although Muth and Prince of Monaco could be transferred to other barns prior to the big prep races leading up to the Derby, Muth’s owner, Amr Zedan, has declined to move his top horses out of Baffert’s barn in the past two years, when a separate ban was in place. Prince of Monaco is owned by a sprawling partnership that includes SF Racing, Starlight Racing, Madaket Stables, and Stonestreet Stables, among others.
Wine Me Up, another Baffert trainee in the Juvenile, is also not individually listed.
In a release, Churchill said that “Pool 1 will assume that horses under the care of trainers suspended from competing in the 2024 Derby will not be under consideration. Instead, they will be included within the parimutuel field,” or the “all others” entries.
This is the second time that Churchill Downs has held a Derby future wager pool prior to the Juvenile being run, the first being last year.
Churchill plans to hold five more future wagers for the Derby, on Nov. 23-26; Jan. 19-21; Feb. 16-18; March 15-17; and April 4-6. The company will host a sire pool concurrent with the Nov. 23-26 pool. A Kentucky Oaks future wager will be held concurrently with the fifth pool, on March 15-17.
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