NICE DIGS: Dr. Kendall Hansen, owner of gray Kentucky Derby hopeful Hansen, relaxes in his Newport, Ky., condo. The owner is confident of his horse’s chances on May 5 at Churchill Downs. (AP)
“All horseplayers die broke,” Damon Runyon wrote. But then, he never met Dr. Kendall Hansen, M.D. Trained as an anesthesiologist, Doc Hansen is also an ace handicapper, a two-fisted bettor and a high-profile thoroughbred owner and breeder who could be sitting on the biggest score of his life.
Hansen, 56, operates Intervention Pain Specialists, a clinic in Crestview Hills, Ky., just across the river from Cincinnati — and 95 miles up I-71 from Churchill Downs, which will be the center of his universe for the next two weeks. Because on Saturday, May 5, Doc Hansen and 70 or so of his closest friends will settle in beneath the Twin Spires to watch his homebred colt, Hansen, run for the roses in the 138th Kentucky Derby.
Named for the doctor’s family, which includes grandfather Harvey Hansen, president of the Detroit Tigers in the late 1950s, Hansen the horse is a light gray son of Tapit — nicknamed “The Great White Hope” by his owner — who won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill last November to clinch the 2-year-old championship.
In three starts this year for trainer Mike Maker, Hansen was second in the Holy Bull, won the Gotham Stakes, then was second again in the Blue Grass after setting a too-fast pace to deep stretch, only to be run down late by the powerful stretch-runner Dullahan. Still, he ranks among the top contenders in perhaps the most wide-open Derby of our lifetime.
“We would have rather gotten our photo taken, but we got his screws tightened,” Hansen said of the Blue Grass, when he raised a minor ruckus by dying his colt’s tail blue before the race, accompanied by three comely young women from his office sprouting blue tails from their tight white dresses. “We’ll get him to relax a bit more in the Derby, and we’re pretty confident we can win.
“What’s so strange is, if Dullahan isn’t in the race, we win by two or three lengths and we’re probably the Derby favorite.”
The fact Hansen will now go off in the 8-1 to 10-1 range doesn’t bother his owner one bit.
“We kind of snuck up on the Breeders’ Cup, and now it looks like all the attention is going to be spread around seven or eight horses, which is great,” he said. “Maybe I’ll get a breather. All the other owners should get their time in front of the camera, bragging about their horses.”
Hansen can talk a blue streak when you ask him how his distance-challenged colt can win the roses. Normally, you could write this off as the ravings of a dreamy-eyed owner overcome by Derby fever. But Hansen is no dilettante. On more than one occasion, dating to his days working in an Indianapolis Ford plant, he has put his money where his mouth is, and walked away with a bundle.
HHe already has his wagering strategy down for the Derby, looking to cash another huge pick 4.
“My plan is to do the same thing I did in the Breeders’ Cup,” he told the Post. “I [bet] a couple thousand on the nose [on Hansen in the Juvenile at 7-1], but after entertaining 70 people, I didn’t have much time to handicap. So I wheeled my horse with everybody in the other three races, hoping for longshots.
“I think that ticket was $1,400, and I had $8,000 in my account, so I repeated it five times. It was just insane. I put two minutes into the pick 4, just click-click-click, and I was luckier than heck. After all the races were over, I turned on my computer, and it looked like a 4 and a 2. I said, ‘That’s OK, I turned $8,000 into $42,000.’ Then someone said, ‘No, Kendall, that’s $420,000 (after taxes were taken out of the $560,000 payoff).’
“That was the best day in my life in horse racing.”
Legend has it Hansen paid his way through medical school at Indiana University by gambling on horse races. Not quite true, he says.
“I didn’t call it gambling,” he said, “because if you’re really a gambler, if it’s in your blood, you’re going to lose.”
Hansen got his start when he was assembling power steering columns at the Ford factory.
“I saw a guy in the lunchroom reading the Racing Form who would bet five bucks a day, and it seemed he was collecting money every week,” he recalled. “He took me under his wing and taught me everything he’d learned in 30 years. Then I read every book I could.
“For three or four months, I didn’t bet. I just picked my horses and looked at the results in the paper the next day. I was starting to hit close to 40 percent. One day, I looked at a daily double that was at Fairmount, of all places. It was exactly my teacher’s favorite pattern.
“But our bookie wouldn’t take a bet on Fairmount. So I drove three hours to St. Louis and bet a $70 cold double, the first bet I ever made, and cashed for over $1,600. I felt like I was robbing a bank. All the way home, I was throwing $100 bills around my car.
“After that, I got a leave of absence from Ford, thought I’d give it a try professionally, and never had to go back. I was 21, 22 years old and had the time of my life, handicapping 12, 16 hours a day. I would maybe bet four races out of 10, waiting for a horse I thought had 50-50 chance, and it was 5-1. I kept statistics showing I won 37 to 40 percent of my races, at average odds of 4.7-1.
“When I won, I’d get myself a ribeye steak. When I’d lose, I’d get hamburger.”
Most nights, Hansen says, he’d eat steak. He bought himself a fancy sports car, and had enough saved to pay for the first half-year in med school.
There have been other memorable payoffs since, but the biggest could come about 6:30 p.m. on the first Saturday in May. Before the Breeders’ Cup, Doc Hansen sold a quarter share of the colt to the Skychai Racing stable for $1 million, and his 75 percent is insured for $4.5 million.
“I told my insurance company to double or triple that,” he said, “as soon as he crosses the finish line first.”