Every Kentucky Derby is wide open. It’s why bettors love it.
Any horse race is tough to predict, but when you throw 20 of the world’s best thoroughbreds on the same track in front of 150,000 people, chaos will ensue.
But the 152nd Run for the Roses may be even more unpredictable than usual.
No. 1 Renegade is the favorite to win this year’s Derby, but the Kentucky-bred is a lukewarm 4-1 price, putting him just a shade ahead of No. 6 Commandment and No. 18 Further Ado, who both were priced at 6/1 by oddsmaker Nick Tammaro.
The Mike Repole-owned, Todd Pletcher-trained colt comes into the Triple Crown season off of back-to-back wins at the Sam F. Davis Stakes and Arkansas Derby, but he hasn’t really separated himself from the other contenders in this field, and he caught a bad break at Saturday’s post-draw.
Renegade was slotted into the dreaded No. 1 position, which hasn’t produced a winner since Ferdinand in 1986.
Repole took to social media after the draw to express his lack of concern about the draw.
“Is it ideal??? No,” Repole said on X. “But I’ll take the 1 post over 15–20 post all day with Renegade’s closing style and explosive late kick.”
With an already lukewarm morning-line favorite now facing an uphill battle, you could make a case for a dozen horses to seize the moment on Saturday.
In fact, with the way this field has settled, this could be a situation where it makes sense to swerve the top of the board entirely.
Think about it this way. The oddsmakers are telling us that the gap between the top three horses is negligible. So, just trying to pick a winner between those three is a tough endeavor, and you’d want to be reward for getting
That’s not to say Renegade, Commandment, and Further Ado aren’t the best horses in the field, the morning-line odds already tell us they are, but handicapping isn’t about identifying the best horses; it’s about finding the best value.
And in a wide-open race like this, it’s hard to be convinced that we can’t find better bang for your buck down the board.
Take No. 9 Fulleffort for instance. He comes in as a 20-1 long shot, but that’s down to a lack of experience on the dirt. Fulleffort spent his entire two-year-old season on the turf, but Brad Cox switched him to the Tapeta surface this year and was rewarded with a spellbinding win at the Jeff Ruby Steaks on March 21.
If a trainer like Cox thinks Fulleffort can make noise on the dirt, who are we to question him? Plus, you will likely get the added benefit of a handsome price on Fulleffort since he is the third Cox horse in this field behind Commandment and Further Ado.
Just ahead of Fulleffort on the oddsboard is No. 15 Emerging Market at 15-1. There are two knocks against this undefeated colt. One, he is trained by Chad Brown, who is 0-for-9 on the First Saturday of May. And the second is that he is very lightly raced, with just two career starts.
In fact, if Emerging Market wins on Saturday, he would become the first horse since 1883 to win the Kentucky Derby with only two prior outings.
That said, both of Emerging Market’s career starts were eye-popping. After breaking his maiden at Tampa Bay Downs in February, he held off three Derby qualifiers, Pavlovian, Golden Tempo, and Chip Honcho, to win the Louisiana Derby.
The cases against Fulleffort, Emerging Market, and other horses in this range are easy to make, but are they enough to warrant them being triple or quadruple the price of the horses at the top of the board? Not in this field. Not in this race.
And don’t forget, even with last year’s chalky Derby, the average odds of the past seven winners is just under 30/1.
Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.
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