LOUISVILLE – In the past 21 years, American horseplayers have lost hundreds of millions of dollars betting the favorite in the nation’s No. 1 horse race, the Kentucky Derby.
In those 21 years, not one favorite has scored, a drought that might be without precedent in such a big classic as the Derby. By conventional handicapping wisdom, a race like the Derby should be won at least 33 percent of the time by the favorite since all horses carry the same weight and are the same age, three years.
So no horse gets an edge in weight or age. They all go into the gate, even steven. The best horse should romp frequently.
Yet, the last favorite to win the Kentucky Derby was Spectacular Bid, one of the truly great horses of the last century, in 1979.
What makes this favorite losing streak even more curious is that in the decade of the 70s, no less than six favorites got the money before Spectacular Bid, making it 7 out of 10.
Nowadays, the Derby favorite is supposedly cursed.
So, one of the spiciest ingredients in this year’s Derby is whether the presumed favorite, Fusaichi Pegasus, hailed by some as the overwhelming class of the crop, will run to his reputation and break the jinx.
His trainer, Neil Drysdale, wryly observed of the phenomenon, “It has been pointed out to me that mathematically, one of these days, the favorite will win.”
Some of the Derby favorite flops have been almost unforgettable, chief among them that wallet burner Arazi in 1992. Horseplayers plunged a record $1.46 million just on his nose to win, and he limped home eighth behind Lil E. Tee.
Fans remembered his incredible acceleration to win the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in the previous autumn and they expected him to do it again.
Everyone, that is, except America’s top trainer, Wayne Lukas, who recalled the Arazi robbery on the backstretch this weekend.
Lukas, as usual, blamed the media for bettors making Arazi the favorite. He said they hyped the horse into favoritism.
“I saw that horse all week – he threw his jockey, Pat Valenzuela, he refused to go into the chute, he bore out on the turns, he did everything wrong, yet the media was calling him the second coming of Secretariat,” said Lukas.
“What made you guys think for one second that Arazi would win the Derby? You’ve got to watch what’s going on.”
But the betting public also made Marfa, a Lukas horse, the 2-1 favorite in the 1983 Derby. He finished off the board behind the winner Sunny’s Halo.
Lukas startled a group of reporters when he said, “Marfa, in his previous race, had been caught in a long, gut-busting duel with Play Fellow over a muddy track in the Blue Grass at Keeneland, 10 days before the Derby.
“The moment they went under the wire, I turned to the owner of Marfa and said, ‘We have no shot in the Derby. We’ve had it. Those horses left everything out there.'”
And so it proved, because not only Marfa finished out of the money, but Play Fellow finished behind him.
Trainer Bob Baffert has an explanation for the favorites’ miserable win record of late. Said Bob, “The media makes the favorites – and let’s face it, you guys are lousy handicappers.”
There are numerous other possible explanations for the failure of favorites – large fields, bad racing luck, the strange distance of a mile and a quarter, the rowdy crowd, bad rides.
But none of these is totally satisfactory because the conditions that applied in the last 20 years also applied in the previous 20 years when favorites regularly won the Derby.
The prime reason, I believe, is that horseplayers too often have landed on the wrong horse. Consider some of the abject failures – Rockhill Native under John Oldham at 2-1, for goodness sake; Proud Appeal and Air Forbes Won, both weak reeds at less than 3-1, Mister Frisky, a 9-5 pizza.
Sometimes, they may have had the best horse but lost it through bad luck. In 1994, they poured the money on Holy Bull, sending him off at 2-1, only to see him lose all chance with a poor start. Holy Bull would later establish himself as an outstanding racehorse.
Tabasco Cat, who won the Preakness and the Belmont, lost all chance in the same Derby (at 6-1) when the horse in the next gate, Brocco, threw a fit and had to be whipped into his stall, setting off Tabasco Cat, who promptly threw his own fit. “We lost that Derby in the starting gate,” said Lukas.