How the 139th Kentucky Derby unfolded Saturday, May 4, at Churchill Downs:
Normandy Invasion finds himself in tight shortly after the break as he gets squeezed between Golden Soul and Mylute while Orb gets away cleanly from the auxiliary starting gate. [Photo: Jenny Burgos]
Score one for the old school.
Orb’s stretch-running victory in the 139th Kentucky Derby was not only trainer Shug McGaughey’s first success in the race, but also a vindication of a philosophy that today seems almost quaint. Whenever the Hall of Famer was asked why he had come to the Derby for only the second time since 1989, he never said that this is the race that every trainer aspires to win. His answer was always on the lines of, “The horse brought me here.”
The overnight rating for the last hour of the Kentucky Derby broadcast on NBC on Saturday was up 16 percent compared with the overnight rating for the same portion of the telecast last year, NBC Sports said on Sunday.
The overnight rating was a 10.4, NBC said, equaling the best rating for the broadcast in 21 years. Share, a measure of the number of televisions in use at the time that were tuned to the broadcast, was a 23, up 15 percent compared with the same figure for 2012.
Last year, ratings and share were up slightly compared with the 2011 broadcast.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – There are times that the best horse does not win a given race. The horse might encounter trouble, either of his own doing or caused by another horse impeding him. Still other times he might lose because another runner capitalizes with a perfect trip.
The Kentucky Oaks was one of these bad-luck races for the best horse, with favored Dreaming of Julia being sideswiped at the start and taken out of her preferred up-close running style, which contributed to her fourth-place finish, and seemingly victory.
Sitting in the interview room at Churchill Downs on Saturday evening, Ogden Mills "Dinny" Phipps averted his gaze to watch a nearby replay of the 139th Kentucky Derby over and over. Each time, the result was the same—Orb, the homebred colt he owns in partnership with his cousin, Stuart S. Janney III, splashing home in the mud to overpower a strong field of 3-year-olds in America's most famed race.
The replay wasn't getting old, though.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – There are times when horse racing can produce maddening, inexplicable results, waved away with a shrug and a common refrain, “That’s horse racing.”
Then there are times when everything comes together as if pre-ordained. The best jockey, on the best horse, prepared by the best trainer, bred by a family that has been competing at the top of racing for generations, wins the Kentucky Derby.[:slideshow-right:]
That, too, is horse racing.
Total betting on the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on Saturday was $130.5 million, according to the race chart, down 2.2 percent from the record total of $133.5 million bet last year but still the second-highest figure of all time.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - When he guided Orb to a decisive triumph Saturday in the Kentucky Derby, jockey Joel Rosario completed an amazing run that began five weeks earlier with his victory aboard Animal Kingdom in the $10 million Dubai World Cup.
In between winning two of the most prestigious and important races in the world, Rosario also found time to set a record for victories at the Keeneland spring meet and to kick off the 2013 Churchill Downs season by winning five races on opening night.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - It literally rained on trainer Todd Pletcher’s Kentucky Derby parade.
After a week where everything went swimmingly for the five-time Eclipse Award winning trainer, Pletcher’s quintet of Derby contenders floundered in the slop at Churchill Downs in the 139th Run for the Roses. The best Pletcher could do was a third-place finish with Revolutionary, the 6-1 second choice.
