Kentucky Derby: Expert gives biggest storylines and sleeper picks
When the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, allowing states to legalize what was once a niche activity, fans suddenly had a new reason to watch sports they may have never considered watching before.
But while people could suddenly bet on almost any sporting event imaginable, the one that wasn’t available through popular sportsbook apps over the years was the Kentucky Derby, also known as the most exciting two minutes in sports.
No longer is that the case.
FanDuel has become the official sports wagering partner of the Kentucky Derby, allowing bettors to wager on every race at Churchill Downs this weekend in the same sportsbook app they use to bet on everything else.
Horse racing is about to gain a new audience.
FTW caught up with longtime horse racing reporter and FanDuel TV analyst Christina Blacker to learn more about horse race betting, the biggest storylines of this year’s Derby and what fans can expect from FanDuel.
CB: So I’ve been involved in racing my entire life. I actually grew up around horses. My dad was a jockey. So I wasn’t really ever riding thoroughbreds as much myself, I was riding show jumpers. But always involved with horses, always had horses as my kind of hobby and my passion in life. And then I studied journalism at USC. I wanted to do something in television, and I did a lot of really cool internships and some entertainment aspects, but I wanted more hands-on experience. So I started at a smaller racing channel called HR TV right out of college, and I kind of fell in love with horses in a new way now with horse racing.
CB: So I think if you’re just new to horse racing, into handicapping, I will admit that it can be a little bit intimidating at first because there’s a lot of data available, which is a good thing. … I would say start first with connections. There are certain jockeys and trainers that win a very high percentage of the time. So for example, Irad Ortiz is a jockey that he wins about 20 to 25% of the time that he rides, which for a jockey is exceptionally high. He’s on the Kentucky Derby favorite Forte. So if he’s your guy, and if he’s a person that you’re following when he’s riding in New York or when he’s riding in Florida, you can follow him to the big stage like a Kentucky Derby and follow his mounts so the entire weekend.
I would say then that if you’re wanting to take it to the next step, you want to get a racing form and start learning how to read the racing form and watching those running lines and seeing which horses are winning. But there’s also other figures that are available that kind of boil all of that information down into one number.
CB: Oh, that’s a really good one. Okay, so my favorite is the walkover. And what I mean by that, if you’re watching the Kentucky Derby this year, the horses walk from their stable to the front side of the racetrack. And that’s where they put the saddle on and they meet the jockey and they kind of get ready for the actual race. But each horse is allowed in the Kentucky Derby to have I think it’s seven or eight people do that walkover with them. And when you walk over in the Derby, you pass the entire crowd, you pass that 150,000 people, and there are trainers and owners and people that are just crying because they’ve dreamt of having a horse in the Derby their whole life and I think that’s the moment where it hits everybody and you see the crowd and you see how grand this race is and what a tradition it is in itself and to know that you are a participant and have one of the best three-year-olds in the country. It’s an emotional experience and I love watching especially the first-timers experience that. I’ve never done it. I’d love to someday.
CB: There’s a lot of good storylines. A couple of them are that we have two trainers that remarkably have several horses in the Kentucky Derby. And so, to put it into perspective, there’s about 19 or 20,000 thoroughbreds born every year. Only 20 qualify. And everybody has the same dream right? You all want to win the Kentucky Derby. There’s one trainer by the name of Brad Cox. He has four horses in this year’s Kentucky Derby. That’s unreal that he has four of the best three-year-olds in the country. Todd Pletcher, who trains Forte, the favorite, has three. So between the two guys, they have seven of these 20 horses, and that’s just…very good trainers will go their entire career and never have a horse good enough to run in the Kentucky Derby…
The other big storyline that we’re following is there’s a horse here from Japan. There’s actually two horses here from Japan, but one of them is the 17 horse, his name as Derma Sotogake. And the Japanese racing product is very strong. It’s extremely popular in Japan, and they’ve put a lot of money into their breeding program to try and breed the best horses they can. And they’ve now been successful internationally in other countries. And they’ve been successful here but not in the Kentucky Derby yet, and Derma Sotogake is the best horse they’ve ever brought to the Derby. I think he’s their best chance to win it.
CB: We’re so excited to be one of the partners of Churchill Downs and to be here. We brought all the bells and whistles, the drone cameras, the jockey cameras, we really literally put jockey cameras on their helmets, like you see what it looks like to be a jockey when you’re watching our broadcast. We are the first and only sportsbook to have horse racing integrated into the sportsbook. So in one app, you can be playing football, baseball, whatever other sports you play if you’re in a state where it’s available, and then you can also hit that same tab and jump on over to horse racing and play the Kentucky Derby this year.
So we’re excited to hopefully bring some new fans to the game and some new betters into horse racing and to try to introduce them to this sport. We kind of started this conversation to make it approachable and to say, “Hey, these are some angles you can look at. These are some people you could focus on. This might be a good way to get your feet wet.” And to remember that there’s horse racing every single day. And so if you are someone that likes to be involved and likes to be playing, it’s a sport that’s always available to you.
We’re racing all over the country, all over the world. And we have our FanDuel TV+ platform, which is an app you can download on Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire. On that app, we’ve put all our exclusive Derby content this year. So all the interviews with the trainers, all the workouts, all the replays you need are all on the app and you can kind of use that as your tool not only to learn but to decide who you want to wager on if you want to wager.
CB: No, I think it’s a great draw for him. I think the odds are according to his ability. He’s 3-1 on the morning line, which I think is fair — +300, if you consider that in any other sports bet, you’re pretty happy if you’re getting +300 on your team. Forte is the favorite because he was the champion horse of this class last year.
So, horses have to be three years old to run in the Kentucky Derby and the earliest that they run is two. At two years old, he was nearly undefeated and he won the most prestigious race for two-year-olds. So he won the Breeders Cup juvenile, he was the champion two-year-old of last year. But as with any athletes — you think about sometimes that high school athlete that goes to college and then everybody else catches up and is bigger and stronger, maybe you’re not as good anymore or you’re college going pro — he’s made that transition. He’s grown up from two to three and he’s undefeated at three as well. So he’s a very, very deserving favorite and I loved his last race, which was the Florida Derby in April.
CB: So when I’m looking at the form, one of the first things I look at is finish position. I look at where they finished in their most recent races. Are they winning? Are they losing? Are they doing terribly? In this particular race, all of these horses are coming in with like first, seconds and thirds in their recent races because again they’ve qualified here. I also look at the conditions that were raced, and there’s so many different types of races. There’s races going short sprint distances, there are races going long-route marathon distances, there are races on turf, races on dirt. So I want to find in that horses form where they’ve been successful in the past and are they in a similar scenario today. Or if they’re not, is there something in their breeding perhaps that would indicate that they might be more successful in a different scenario.
CB: They are, but I think you have to remember in horse racing these are paramutual, we’re betting against each other. So the odds are gonna change. He might be 3-1 at post time, but if people are pouring money into another horse, he might be 7-2, he might be 5-1, he might go up or down. They all could change. But in the Kentucky Derby you not only have to be the best horse but you also have to have some luck, because there’s 20 horses. We don’t normally run races with that many horses. We just don’t have that many horses going for the same race all the time. You’d have fields of 8, 10, 12 on a normal day. So there’s going to be a certain amount of traffic that just occurs in a 20-horse field. So there’s going to be times when the best horse doesn’t win the Kentucky Derby. You have to be one of the best horses, you have to have the ability to overcome trouble. But you also need a little bit of luck out there.
CB: The nine horse, Skinner, is another horse that he just wouldn’t surprise me at all. He’s 20-1 on the morning line, and the reason I like him is because I think we haven’t seen the best of him yet. I’ve watched him train a little bit in the mornings and in the afternoons. He’s had some bad luck in his races. He’s had some really wide trips, and he’s only losing by small margins. But I think you could easily argue that with a better trip, Skinner would have won a lot of those races along the way. And he wouldn’t be 20-1 in the Kentucky Derby. He gets a new jockey for the Kentucky Derby by the name of Juan Hernandez, who is another leading rider in California. And I think he’s a very tactical guy and he’s going to fit this horse really well. If he can give Skinner a better trip than he has had in his last few starts, he’s one that I think could really surprise this group.
CB: My top selection is going to be the 14 horse Angel of Empire. He’s trained by Brad Cox, one of the guys that has the four horses. He’s ridden by Flavien Prat, who is one of the best riders in the country. … Angel of Empire is a horse that I think is sitting on his best race this weekend. I look at his pattern and I look at each race, he’s gotten better and better in small incremental margins, which is a good thing. Sometimes racehorses can go out and they improve dramatically in one race. But like any athlete, it’s hard to run that same race again. It’s hard to hit your peak performance back to back. I think Angel of Empire is about to peak. And if he does, I think he’s better or capable of being better than Forte and the rest of this group.
