Projected Kentucky Derby 2011 Odds

As I posted in my first note, the morning line is just an estimate; the true odds you'll get can't be determined until after the pool has closed. Some money has already been bet on the Kentucky Derby, so we have projected pools, but this is usually just tourist money and not particularly helpful for projecting where the odds will sit.

On the other hand, each year, Churchill Downs includes a Daily Double bet combining the Kentucky Derby and the Kentucky Oaks (the version of the Derby restricted to female runners). The will-pays for that double are a mature market, so they tend to come out pretty closely to what the odds truly will be.

You can find the actual will-pays in the comments on Steve Crist's DRF blog. Given that market, here's what the final odds will look like tomorrow (just rough projections):

Archarcharch: 10-1

Brilliant Speed: 25-1 

Twice the Appeal: 27-1 (note: I think this will be lower, since there will be more money on Calvin Borel in the win pool than in this pool)

Stay Thirsty: 23-1

Decisive Moment: 74-1

Comma to the Top: 40-1

Pants on Fire: 20-1 (I think this will be lower)

Dialed In: 5.5-1 (seems high)

Derby Kitten: 45-1

Twinspired: 50-1

Master of Hounds: 17-1

Santiva: 23-1

Mucho Macho Man: 11-1

Shackleford: 16-1 (seems high)

Midnight Interlude: 8.5-1 (seems low, but the winner in the Oaks was also Baffert-trained, so this could be Baffert-Baffert money. Expect closer to 10-1)

Animal Kingdom: 16-1

Soldat: 11-1

Nehro: 7.5-1

Watch Me Go: 94-1 (lulz)

People are playing the mud angle with Soldat. Shackleford feels like a value. So does Dialed In (maybe) at 5.5-1, though this could be from people spreading themselves deep. Bettors weren't scared off Archarcharch and the one post too badly. Finally, you won't get 94-1 on any horse in the Derby; memories of Mine That Bird are too fresh, and lots of people bet money on huge longshots just for a chance at a lottery payout. expect 60-1 to be the limit. On the bright side, that means every other payout will go up a little bit because of that.

The 2011 Kentucky Derby Field

Interest of full disclosure: I have a terrible record on Kentucky Derby day. How terrible? Well, here's what I wrote about Mine That Bird two years ago:

"Mine That Bird might be the worst entry I've seen in the Derby; he's definitely worse than any entry from the past two years. After winning a series of ungraded stakes and beating a weak field in the Grade 3 Grey Stakes at Woodbine, Mine That Bird regressed terribly in the BC Juvenile, finishing last out of 12 entries. He failed to hit the board last out in the Sunland Derby, a race still waiting for graded status. His highest Beyer rating is 81, well below some of the poor efforts put out by top horses such as I Want Revenge, Friesan Fire and Pioneerof the Nile. He may go off the board at triple digits to one."

Mine That Bird won the 2009 Kentucky Derby by the greatest margin of any horse in six decades.

In fairness, the only people I've met that wagered on Mine That Bird had the same birthday as his silk number, but still, I whiffed badly. I missed Super Saver last year (thought he'd burn up in the hot pace, and was almost right) and I "missed" Big Brown (tried to play against, and it backfired). So, caveat emptor on these selections. So the first Saturday in May hasn’t been my most profitable weekend recently.

Making things even worse, this is the most closely-matched Derby field I've seen. Usually, you can toss five or so horses within a few minutes of looking at the form, but because this group is so undistinguished, the most mediocre entries look like plausible longshots if you hold them in the right light and squint at them long enough. Some tosses for me are contenders for others. I’ll give you my reasoning; you can go from there.

I'll give my plays Saturday before I make them, but first a look at the field in the order they were drawn on Wednesday afternoon.

1.) Archarcharch: Cruel, cruel chance. Archarcharch wasn't going to be the morning line favorite regardless of where he was placed, but the one post killed his chances of being the favorite when the race began as well. Wins in the Arkansas Derby and the Rebel Stakes were sandwiched (breaded?) around a loss in the Rebel that was nonetheless a strong effort on some speed figures. He's improving, seems to have a sound sense of his own pace limitations, including placement flexibility, and the slop is not a concern.

Yet no horse has won from the one post since 1986. This isn't just superstition or coincidence. There are real problems from the very inside, not the least of which is that because of the strange placement of the gate. The unlucky inside horse actually start a little bit inside of where the rail begins, meaning that their first few steps are more focused on getting placed than getting a good jump. Lookin' at Lucky was easily the best three year old last year, but even he could not overcome the placement. Aracharcharch isn't that much better than the field, if he's better at all. I'd toss completely, especially since so much money will come in on him despite the placement, but you perhaps may want to protect yourself underneath on exotics. (WARNING: with Uncle Mo’s defection, I’m not sure if the outside horses will slide inward, or if the inside horses will slide out. If it’s the latter, upgrade Archarcharch considerably).

2.) Brilliant Speed: Ironically, Brilliant Speed doesn't have much brilliant speed at all, instead doing what most turf and poly horses do: taking it slow early and making up ground late. At least Brilliant Speed, unlike some of the turfers in the race, was pointed at the dirt early on in his career, but those efforts were pretty bad, and, like Pink Floyd, there was immediate improvement once he hit the grass.

The effort in the Bluegrass at Lexington is impressive on paper--a hard close into a molasses-slow pace--but it's the sort of result that handicappers have learned to ignore on the poly. These sorts of weird things happen on rubber, and I don't think Brilliant Speed is the type of closer that can overcome crawling paces on dirt. Of course, the Derby’s pace will be decent at minimum, so he has that working for him. His works on the slop have been not all that good, and I think the 30-1 given to him on the morning line was a little kind; I think he's a 50-1 shot even ignoring the less-than-optimal post placement.

3.) Twice the Appeal: Borel! Borel, borel, borel. Borel borel, borel borelled borel borelingly borel. Borel borel borel borel borelling borel? Borel borel borel borel.

Yes, Calvin Borel is riding Twice the Appeal. You're going to be reminded of that a few dozen times on Saturday, and you'll also be told "Bo-Rail!" and yes, Twice the Appeal will probably be sitting pretty close to the rail for as much of the race as possible. There are obvious benefits to this--it's the shortest path around the course, for one thing, and biases tend to reside there if they reside at all--but there is usually heavy traffic along the rail as well. Sometimes the seas part, and Borel has been known to play Moses at Churchill Downs, but sometimes you get stuck behind a wall of horse ass and a colt that's otherwise full of run can't make it through.

Jockeys aren't as important as you might think, and they are almost all good ones in the Kentucky Derby, with Borel only one among many quality riders (and believe it or not, he's not some mythical super-jockey outside of the Kentucky Derby; just a quality journeyman). Let’s focus on the horse for a moment or two: Twice the Appeal undoubtedly took a step forward in the Sunland Derby six weeks ago, though there is some concern about the "six weeks ago" part of that, since that's a while to go without a race before the big one. This was also a horse that was in a maiden claimer in January--you, gentle reader, could have purchased Twice the Appeal for $30,000 and had yourself a 1000% rate of return over four months, along with a horse in America's biggest race--and maiden claimer to Grade 1 isn't a move often made, at least not in four months.

I think Twice the Appeal is plausible, but he would have been plausible with Mike Smith or Kent Desormeaux or any other reasonable jockey. With Borel, he's going to get bet down by all the people like your cousin who has this hot tip about a jockey that never loses, and I don't like him enough to get only 10-1. The good news? That cousin of yours isn't going to be playing exactas and trifectas. The return on these plays with Twice the Appeal is going to be more generous than your average 10-1 (or whatever) horse because of the Borel Bettors. Great value in the exotics and a must use there IMO. If you were going to bet $20 to win on him, box him for $1 over the other 18 horses and buy yourself a soda with the other $2. Chances are you’ll thank me later if he wins.

4.) Stay Thirsty: This is the horse that your douchebag friend who you don't really like but you met him in high school and he hangs around with you sometimes is going to bet on. I know this because he's going to spend the three hours after he makes his bet saying "stay thirsty, my friends," thus wringing whatever humor still remains deep within the already body-dry cloth of those Dos Equis commercials.

Stay Thirsty was the lesser Todd Pletcher entry, but with Uncle Mo's defection he is now the trainer’s only hope for back-to-back Kentucky Derby wins. His Gotham Stakes win two races ago was by three lengths, yet was visually unimpressive; the speed figures back up the negative visual impression. Last time out he did nothing in the Florida Derby despite sitting comfortably off the hot pace. All horses are entitled to an off race, but there hadn't been any spectacular efforts before then either. 20-1 feels generous, and I don't think he'd get that low if he hadn't won a stakes race in New York. Meh. I'll probably pass, though I might use him on the bottom of exotics if I'm feeling bold, adventurous, and interesting.

How to Handicap the Races

There are dozens of systems for picking horses, some good and most bad. There’s the gray horse method, the wife’s birthday method, the “choose the horse that most recently defecated” method; I won’t list them all here. A few systems, however, are both popular and widely accepted as getting at something true, even if by itself they present an incomplete picture. I’ll discuss a few of those here.

A few words about the form: past performances are horse racing’s box form. They are an incredibly efficient way to transmit a great deal of information about what horses have done before. Reading the form isn’t difficult, but it can be intimidating the first time you see all the tiny-font numbers with even tinier-font numbers superscripted above them. To make use of these systems, you’ll have to be able to read the form. A helpful tutorial is provided here.

Speed Handicapping: Not as Easy as It Sounds: On its surface, horse racing seems like it should be an easy sport: the fastest horses win the most. And that’s true; the fastest horse wins every race (duh). But for decades and decades, handicappers learned to ignore final times. “Time only matters in prison,” so the adage goes.

Why would handicappers ignore the piece of data that tells you how fast a horse actually ran? Because horses all run on different tracks. Courses in the Southwest are hard and fast, like running on a sidewalk. Courses in the Midwest are deep, which slows down times. Even an individual track can run fast or slow on different days, or slow down or speed up within a single day of races. Sometimes races around one turn are fast but around two turns are slow. There’s too much wobble in the numbers to look at the final time and get anything useful from that alone.

But we can also control for the wobble. How this works is complicated, but a speed figure tries to control for the variations in time and different courses. The speed figure is a number based on the final time, but which only treats the final time as a starting point.

These figures (the most famous of which are the Beyer Figures published in the Daily Racing Form) are incredibly valuable, but understand their limitations. These figures are tied to nothing but final times, so they do not capture if a horse had a difficult trip around the track, or whether the horse slowed down before the wire because it was so far out in front or behind, or whether the horse had a minor injury, or anything else. They are nothing but augmentations of final time.

Pace Makes the Race (Usually): Horses have different styles of running. Some set the pace, while others are “closers” that make their moves just before the finishing wire. Horses can be trained to change their styles to some degree, but many have natural preferences that cannot be switched.

That being said, races on dirt (as the Kentucky Derby is) are run in one style: fast. Early speed horses run as fast as they can early and hope they have a big enough lead to hold on. Closing horses run as fast early as they do late (but usually not faster: their hard gains late are usually an optical illusion, and their pace has stayed the same throughout the race. But there are exceptions; Secretariat ran every quarter mile of his Kentucky Derby faster than he ran the one preceding it, which is ridiculous).

In a slow paced race—that is, a race in which the horses go slower than usual early—the horses near the front find themselves with more energy late, and the horses in back can’t go fast enough to catch up. In a fast-paced race, the horses in front burn themselves out and the ones in back catch up at the end. A thoroughbred that can stay up front through a hot pace and win is very good, better than a closer that wins in the same conditions. Horses that have won from behind in a slow race or won from the front in fast races deserve extra credit for their speed figures (some handicappers produce “pace figures” that mimic speed figures; these are rarer but useful).

Fortunately for handicappers, the Derby tends to get run at only one of three paces: average, fast, or suicidal. There are almost no slow Derbies; there are too many horses, and a few will get out and set the pace quickly if nothing else but to avoid having to fight traffic later. That doesn’t mean that you can dismiss a horse that is likely to be up front. But you can dismiss a horse, especially from win bets, who absolutely needs the front—the type of horse that hates getting dirt kicked in its face or being surrounded by other runners and will go as quickly as necessary to set the pace. These horses are fried before the homestretch.

So the Derby is a closer’s race, but be warned: much has to go right for a deep closer to win. With 20 horses, many of which are fading quickly in the final stretch, traffic can become a nightmare for horses in the back. Just last year, Ice Box ran perhaps the best race in the Derby but had to fight around too many other runners to get up in time. In the perfect world, you’d like to be positioned somewhere near the front, but far enough back to maintain a reasonable early speed.

Class Handicapping: Not Terribly Helpful in this Context: Before speed figures, class handicapping was the king of methods. Is the horse facing better or worse this time out? Is he stepping up or dropping down? Is a $15,000 race for non-winners of three better than a $20,000 race for non-winners of two?

Class handicapping still has its place for everyday betting, but all the horses in the Derby have been running in classy races. Besides, everyone is stepping up in class for the Kentucky Derby. That no one knows who will handle the “class” best is part of the fun, and the challenge.

Trip Handicapping: The Hidden Weapon: Horse racing isn’t run on a sprinter’s track. The competitors in the Derby won’t have paths marked on the ground, and there will be all sorts of bumping and jostling. At least six horses on Saturday will have no chance because of how the initial “cavalry charge” shakes out. There is very little a handicapper can do to mitigate this.

But, they can also use trip knowledge to their advantage. For example, was a horse far off the rail on the turns in their previous races? If they were, they ran a further distance than the other horses in that race. Or, was the horse bumped leaving the gate? If so, perhaps they have an excuse for a bad effort. There is also a theory that tracks can develop biases, either towards types of runners (early speed horses have an advantage) or towards spots on the track (the theory behind Mind That Bird's upset win is that the area near the rail was harder than the rest of the track, so Calvin Borel took his mount on the freeway while rest of the field was traveling on a country gravel road). I think biases do happen, but the most common bias is confirmation bias ("longshot won from the front of the field? Speed bias!")

Unlike the above methods, you can’t really trip handicap only by looking at the form. True, the past performances will give you a line about what happened in the race, but that line can only capture a small fraction of the trip knowledge. The good thing about the Derby in this modern era of ours, however, is that all the prep races can be found on YouTube. Punch up the race, watch the horse, and see if he had any trouble.

One word of caution, though: as discussed above, closers tend to have more trip trouble because they have to pass tired horses in the homestretch. If a horse is a committed closer, this is a problem he will face in every race, though not always to the same extent. Don’t automatically bump a closer up just because he was forced to go wide or because he had to change courses, unless you think that this won’t be true in the next race.

Breeding and Dosage: the Astronomy and Astrology of Horse Racing: The modern thoroughbred has been meticulously inbred. Everythoroughbred racing today, from the Kentucky Derby favorite to the cheapest maiden claimer in the US, is the descendant of three stallions from the 17th and 18th century. In some ways, even this overstates the diversity, since 95% of the horses can trace their Y chromosome back to one early 18th century stallion, the Darley Arabian. And several other bottlenecks have occurred more recently, with Native Dancer (through Mr. Prospector, among others) and Seattle Slew (through A.P. Indy, among others) have been particularly important.

Breeding is as much art as science, and is as much luck as either; genetics is nothing but probabilities, and the chances of creating a great horse, regardless of the stock you use, are very slim. But it is a science, and there are definite statistical tendencies. Some lines prefer the turf over dirt, while others love muddy tracks. Some have trouble with stamina, while others fail to show early speed. These are nothing more than tendencies which can be extrapolated from data sets, but when a horse is trying something new (as is true of all Derby participants), sometimes pedigree is the best we have to work with.

Breeding is science. Dosage theory is a peculiar pseudo-science derived from breeding and genetics. According to Dosage theory (I'm oversimplifying here), stallions--referred to ostentatiously as "chefs de race"--fit into one of five categories, ranging from "brilliant" (fast but tires quickly) to "professional" (slow but great endurance). If you assign a number to each stallion in a horse's bloodline for four generations based on that stallion's aptitude and plug those numbers into an equation, the equation will spit out a number. That number represents the talent of the Derby participant: too high, and the runner won't get the distance, but too low and the runner won't be fast enough. (I took out a lot of details in that description. If you're interested, read this).

As a heuristic, Dosage might not be a bad way of finding horses whose pedigree might not hold up. But many Dosage proponents claim much more than that. But lots of Dosage people claim much more than that, thinking that Dosage is the One True Method of winning the Derby. And generally, horses within the acceptable dosage range have won the Derby.

But there are many reasons to be skeptical. First, Dosage applies only to the Kentucky Derby and maybe the Belmont; it apparently doesn't work for the Preakness, which is only two weeks after the Derby and almost the same distance, or any other race. Second, the Dosage people assign the stallions to categories, and they've been known to fiddle with the categorizations until they "work." Finally, Dosage hasn't even been all that successful lately; five of the past 20 winners have been outside the range, with Mine That Bird being the most recent. Considering that most participants fall within the acceptable Dosage range, this isn't a fantastic record.

Some people still swear by the method though, and you might hear some of the terms bandied this week. I tend to think these people are either kooks, or the types of folks that put definite articles behind nouns like Google. To each his own, but Dosage is not part of my toolkit.

Betting the Races: An Overview

When you bet on football games—which is purely hypothetical unless you live in Las Vegas or Aruba because it’s illegal—you wager on a fixed line. The casino or other source of legal, legitimate gambling tells you what you will get if your bet is successful when you make that bet. You have a contract with the casino, payable if the condition happens. If the casino offers a better deal to others later on, too bad. If they offer worse offers to other people later on, then you’ve placed your wager at a good time. When you win, the casino pays out; when you lose, the casino takes the money. The casino wants you to lose, so that they can build fountains and marble statues and elaborate showgirl headdresses and sixty cent lunch buffets that would make a Babylonian Emperor blush from the decadence.

Horse racing doesn’t work that way. Generally (there are exceptions not worth getting into here), the track does not care whether you win or lose, because they win money either way. Unlike sports betting at a casino, horse tracks operate on the pari-mutuel system. At its most simple, here’s how it works: people bet on different horses to win. When the race begins, that money is pooled. The track takes its cut of the pool, and then pays out the remainder to the winner. The bettors who wagered on the winner get their money back, plus their fraction of the remaining pool. The track gets its cut regardless of who wins; all it cares about is getting as much money wagered as possible.

Take, for example, a race in which $100,000 is bet on all the horses combined to win, and $10,000 is bet on the actual winner. Imagine also that the track’s take is 10% (usually it’s higher on win bets, generally around 16–17%). That leaves $90,000 for the winners, so for every dollar wagered on the winning horse, the bettor would get $9 in return. Note that this means no one knows how much they would get from a winning bet until the pool is closed; as long as money is still being wagered, the odds can change. If you bet a horse that is currently 15-1 and at race time he is 5-1 because someone placed a huge bet on him, too bad—you’re only getting 5-1.

This makes horse racing rather like poker. The more skilled the other bettors are at picking winners, the less you will win if you also pick the winner. Fortunately, since so many people bet the Kentucky Derby, there’s lots of new (some might say dumb) money in the pools. It’s as if ten million people sat down to a poker game, and a healthy percentage of them made their wagers based on whether their cards were pretty or not, or whether they liked the name of the queen of diamonds, or whether the four of clubs has an interesting backstory.

There are several different bets you can make, and each bet has its own pool. In other words, how much the horse will pay if it wins does not affect how much it will pay to place or show (though the numbers are often correlated, since horses that are favorites to win are usually favorites to place or show, too). Here are the bets and standard units for betting on most races, including the Kentucky Derby:

Win: Horse must win the race. ($2)

Place: Horse must win the race or finish second or third. ($2)

Show: Horse must win the race, or finish second or third. ($2)

Exacta: One horse must finish first, and another horse must finish second. ($2)

Trifecta: One horse must finish first, another horse must finish second, and another must finish third. ($1)

Superfecta: Same as trifecta, but add the fourth horse as well (usually $.10, but minimums will be $1 for the Derby).

There are also bets where you pick multiple race winners in a row (daily double; pick 3, 4, 5, and 6).

For the bets in which you must name multiple horses in order, these horses must finish in the order you say; if you get the right horses but miss the order, you lose. You can box the horses, which means they can finish in any order (if you place an exacta box for the 3, 7, and 10 horses, any finish that has the 3, 7, or 10 in first and second wins), but all you are doing here is buying every combination. In other words, one of your bets in the box wins, and all the rest lose.

The more complicated bets are almost impossible to hit dead on in one shot. Take the trifecta, for example. In an ordinary race with ten horses, there are 720 different potential finishing combinations. In the Kentucky Derby, which often has twenty runners, there are 6,840 combinations. The Derby superfecta has 116,280 potential combos. Hitting these in one chance is almost impossible.

At the same time, boxing combinations quickly adds up. Boxing three horses for $1 costs $6. Boxing four costs $24. Boxing five costs $120. Instead of a box that captures every combination, many players will “wheel” their picks. Here, the idea is that there will be more chaos as to who comes in third or fourth than who finishes first. But boxing the horses treats every combination the same (a five horse, $1 box for $120 is just purchasing all 120 combinations). Many bettors will pick one or two horses on top and more options on bottom. For example, for that same $120, the bettor can pick two different horses that can finish first, six different horses to finish second, and twelve different horses to finish third for that same $120. In exchange for fewer options at the top, the bettor gets more options for later runners.

The part wheel might also be an attractive option in two other situations. Perhaps there is a horse that is obviously the best in the field, but there’s two longshots that you like to finish second. You could bet those horses to place, but if the favorite wins, that place bet won’t pay much, because most of the place pool will be extinguished when the place money bet on the favorite is returned. Instead, the bettor might lay an exacta wheel with the favorite on top and the longshots on bottom. It won’t pay all that much, but chances are it will pay quite a bit more than the place payout.

Finally (and this is rare), the part wheel can protect a bet for a horse to not win. If there’s a horse you really like to finish second, but only second, the place bet doesn’t do you any good. Instead, you could build a part wheel the other direction, with more options on top and only one horse in that second spot. I only see this situation come up a few times a year for myself, but it can still be a useful tool.

Some quick tips to betting the Kentucky Derby:

Feel free to bet on whatever basis you like: By all means; that will only make everyone else’s winning wagers pay more. This is supposed to be fun, and if betting the gray horse or the one with the cool name is fun for you, then do it. Someone out there probably bet Mine That Bird two years ago because of his Aunt Linda Bird or because Grandpa Cletus was a coal miner, and that guy won a healthy amount of money.

Don’t bet seven horses to show: yes, you’ll probably cash at least one. But you’ll be really disappointed when you only get back about how much you paid for all the bets. I’m generally skeptical of show betting, but the payouts do tend to be pretty strong here because of all the entrants. Still, you’ll eat your profits away with too many combinations.

Take a swing at the exotics: the payouts can still be healthy, even when the results are pretty ordinary. For example, in 2007, the horses that finished first, second, and third were three of the top four choices to win the race, but the trifecta still paid over $200 dollars for a $1 wager. If you had boxed the top four choices, you’d have wagered only $24 and gotten back over eight times that much.

And that trifecta payout was unusually low by Derby standards. Favorite Big Brown won in 2008 with logical second and third choices, and the trifecta still paid $1700 for $1. Three very reasonable selections hit the board last year and the trifecta paid $500 for a buck. You don’t need to go in deep, but at least take a chance; the big payoffs are unique to horse racing.

Stay within your means: Obviously. Set a budget and stay there. And have fun.

Why Does Anybody Care about the Kentucky Derby?

(It’s the offseason in everything except baseball, and even I’m not diehard enough to care about Big Ten baseball. So, I'll have some Kentucky Derby talk this week along with whatever Big Ten tidbits catch my eye. Still working on the Iowa preview. Sorry, but I've been busy.)

Horse racing is not exactly surging in popularity right now. A recent poll asking people their favorite sport pegged support for horse racing at 1%, which is better than the zeros and asterisks for a few sports, but not much (another poll pegs horse racing as roughly as popular women’s volleyball, which, fair enough). People pay attention during the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May, watch the Preakness two weeks later to see how the Derby winner does, and then watch the Belmont if the Kentucky Derby winner also won the Preakness. Some, but not nearly as many, will watch the Breeders’ Cup in the fall. A few will turn out for the big race in their region of the country. That’s about it.

But why the Kentucky Derby? Contrary to what new fans or non-fans might think, the Kentucky Derby is not the Super Bowl of thoroughbred racing. That is, the Kentucky Derby does not take the best horses from the world (and country) and face them off in a race; that would be the Breeders’ Cup Classic—theoretically—in November. The Derby doesn’t even necessarily attract very good horses. Only three year olds can race in the Derby (by convention, all horses bred in the northern hemisphere share birthdays on January 1, so the horses in the Derby next Saturday will be somewhere between 36 and 41 months old). Not all thoroughbreds develop on the same schedule, but only extremely rarely is a horse that young as good as his elders in the handicap division. Even with the current very weak handicap division, any of the top dozen horses, at least, in the division right now would go off as the overwhelming favorite in the Derby if they were eligible.

The Derby isn’t even the three year old championship. Races have been going on all over the country for three year olds to gain eligibility to the Derby, and the top money earners will race Saturday. In that sense, the Derby is a culmination of the process. But this isn’t the end of the three year old division. After all, the two other Triple Crown races are for three year olds only as well. The Preakness is funny because it comes only two weeks after the Derby (top horses are almost never run that quickly back to back any more), and the Belmont is funny because it’s a mile and a half (top horses almost never run that far anymore). But there will be others: the Jim Dandy and, more importantly, the Travers at Saratoga in the late summer are for three year olds as well, and by this point, the colts are more fully physically developed. There is no race that announces which horse was the best three year old, and the Derby is only one data point among many.

Hell, the Derby isn’t even particularly good at identifying good horses for later races. The past two winners, Mine That Bird and Super Saver, failed to win another race before their retirement. Many horses that win the Derby and other Triple Crown races are quickly retired (better to preserve their value for the breeding shed). This is what happened to Smarty Jones, for example, after falling just short of the Triple Crown in the Belmont. Other Derby winners, such as Funny Cide, have reasonable but unspectacular careers. The only two Derby winners in the past ten years that have done any better than that are Big Brown (and that’s debatable; Big Brown won two stakes races after the Belmont, including one on grass, but neither race had a particularly good field), and Street Sense.

That’s what the Kentucky Derby isn’t. But it is some things, too. The Derby is the unofficial start of the spring, even more so than the start of baseball season (it can, and often does, snow on April 1, after all), just as football season inaugurates the fall. The Derby is also the longest running annual sporting event in America, stretching back to 1875 (the Belmont started in 1874 but was put on hiatus for two years in the 1910s as New York banned gambling). The race is a throwback to an earlier era—not the gilded age of ruffled collars and muttonchops when the Derby began (though Stephen Foster does become strangely moving for a few moments during My Old Kentucky Home), but an era when women wore fancy hats and men drank mint juleps and wore less-fancy hats and none of those things were interesting enough to point out. Maybe that era never really existed as we pretend, but that’s not the point. Every year, three year olds run in Kentucky on the first Saturday in May, and for lots of people, that continuity alone is important, whether the trappings of that continuity are real or imagined.

For others, the Derby is the betting race par excellence. Twenty horses enter the race, none of which have run a mile and a quarter in their lives. Millions upon millions upon millions of dollars in wagers are placed, and in horse racing, your payout depends upon how much other people bet. Guess the first two horses in order and you're probably getting a healthy three figures in return for two bucks; the first three horses will earn you at least a grand and maybe twenty times that; guessing the first four horses in order will change your life. If a gambler can’t get excited about that, maybe he should stick with slot machines or keno.

Finally, and maybe it's hokey, but the Derby is about hope. Racing hasn’t had a Triple Crown winner since 1978. Maybe you can’t name a current thoroughbred to save your life, but chances are that you've heard of the last three Triple Crown winners: Affirmed, Seattle Slew, Secretariat. Yes, there are Super Savers and Mine That Birds that flame out, never to win or even contend again. But there also superstars that first capture the public’s imagination at Churchill Downs. Had Secretariat not won the Derby, only diehards, degenerates, and historians would remember his commanding Belmont win. Almost all information is public, and for a week, America has ten million handicappers. Everyone learns, again, how to read the racing form. Everyone unironically turns their attention to the 16th most popular sport in America, even if they're only ironically drinking their juleps. Owners dream of winning the Derby. Jockeys riding at tracks in Podunk fantasize about riding a horse that somehow makes one, even if it means finishing up the track. Grown men are driven to tears. If the Kentucky Derby did not exist, someone would have to invent it. Fortunately, that’s unnecessary.