Churchill Downs this year will run on the Sunday prior to the Kentucky Derby for the first time since 2010. The track will also run its opening-day card during the afternoon rather than at night, the track said on Wednesday.
The addition of the Sunday, April 26, card means that Churchill will run live every day except Monday from opening day on April 25 until the Derby card on Saturday, May 2.
For 21 consecutive years there wasn’t a Kentucky Derby run in which Todd Pletcher didn’t have a starter.
Until 2025. Thirty-six hours before the race, Grande, who had finished second in the Wood Memorial four weeks earlier, was scratched due to a cracked heel in his right front foot. Grande was Pletcher’s only entrant in a race in which he started multiple starters 20 of 24 years in which he ran. Thus, the longest streak of consecutive Derby appearances was over.
With high volume from the usual suspects and continued interest from Japanese horsemen, a total of 367 3-year-olds have been nominated to this year’s Triple Crown series.
The 367 figure is six fewer than last year’s early nominees.
Ted Noffey, the undefeated winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, has been made the 6-1 individual favorite in the Kentucky Derby Future Wager pool, which opens on Friday.
Ted Noffey, who has yet to record a published workout in 2026, is one of 39 individual betting interests being offered in the pool, which opens at noon Eastern on Friday and closes at 6 p.m. Sunday. “All others” was made the 4-1 favorite.
Further Ado, winner of the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes in November, and Paladin, winner of the Grade 2 Remsen Stakes on Dec. 6, are both listed at 10-1.
Pyromancer won his stakes debut – and remained unbeaten after three starts – with a game victory in Wednesday’s $458,700 Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun at Kawasaki Racecourse in Japan, the second of four qualifying races in the country for the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 2.
Ted Noffey, the undefeated winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, has been made the 6-1 individual favorite in the Kentucky Derby Future Wager pool opening on Thursday.
Ted Noffey, who is the likely 2-year-old champion, is one of 39 individual horses being offered in the pool, which will close on Sunday. The final entry, “all others foaled in 2023,” is the 9-5 favorite.
Churchill Downs will open the betting on next year’s Kentucky Derby with the first of its future wager pools on Wednesday, with betting closing just prior to the running of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile on Friday evening.
This year’s series awarding qualifying points for entry into next year's Kentucky Derby will include 36 races, starting with Saturday’s Iroquois Stakes at Churchill Downs, according to a schedule released Monday by track personnel.
Twenty-one of the races have been categorized in the “prep season” running from Sept. 13 to Feb. 21, with most awarding 10 or 20 points to the winner. The exception is the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, which awards 30 points to the winner.
Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty officially got on the work tab about a year ago and made his first start last August, but Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott’s association with the family goes back more than a quarter-century. He put the tack on great-granddam Sluice for her career debut in July 2000 and has since handled a few generations of this family.
“It’s really kind of a neat thing to be able to train those families and those generations of horses,” Mott said. “It might be telling my age a little bit, but it really makes it pretty special.”
Regardless of what happens the rest of the way with the Triple Crown and other major spring events, sires Into Mischief and Medaglia d’Oro exit the first weekend in May having already pulled off their own historic triples in the classics.
