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With a little more than 24 hours remaining until the 134th Kentucky Derby, I was frantically catching up on handicapping the Derby Day and – to a lesser extent – the Kentucky Oaks (the yearly Friday card prior to the Kentucky Derby that features the female version of the Run for the Roses) at Churchill Downs.  Both of these long-standing thoroughbred racing traditions also feature stakes-laden under-cards which often offer some very enticing betting opportunities. 

A couple of hours prior to Oaks post-time, I found one of those potential gems in a Bobby Frankel trained horse, Giant Gizmo, in the Grade 3 Alysheeba at 1 1/16 miles.  Coming off a race fast enough to challenge the favorites, Giant Gizmo seemed like a gift at 5-1 so I logged into my Xpressbet online wagering account to place my bet and (insert annoying buzzer sound effect) – I quickly learned that Xpressbet was only offering wagering on the Kentucky Oaks race itself, and not the rest of the Churchill Downs card – Huh??

Upon further investigation, I found that the only way I was going to bet on pretty much any other race other than the Oaks and the Derby themselves on these two prestigious days at Churchill would be to drive to a local simulcast location like Santa Anita or Hollywood Park.  Not really the end of the world, other than the fact that Friday is also my wife’s birthday and the weekend is filled with various other social engagements, so I don’t have time to drive to one of these tracks to place any additional wagers.

 While this might seem like a minor hiccup to more casual fans of horse racing, regular players like myself wait with great anticipation for days like Derby Day, where the betting pools grow fat with uninformed money bet by casual players, and the payouts on exotic wagers like exactas, trifectas, and multi-race wagers like the pick 4 and pick 6 are considerably inflated in comparison to average racing days.

 Thankfully, I was able to make a little bit of cash hitting a $57 exacta on the Oaks – not exactly a windfall payout but a small consolation for my earlier disappointment.

 The real shame about this is simply the fact that the racing world – particularly the Internet wagering sites and Churchill Downs – couldn’t come to some kind of reasonable arrangement prior to one of the sport’s biggest days, and accommodate the millions of fans who would like to spend their days wagering on two of the strongest cards of racing presented each year from the comfort of their own homes.  For an industry that has such a strong and publicized interest in regaining the spotlight it once had in the glory days of Seabiscuit and later Secreteriat, it instead pulls a typically counter-productive move and fails to provide fans with wagering opportunities that have become a mainstay in modern thoroughbred betting.

 After clinging to the hope that some last minute miracle might come through, Xpressbet finally posted this message on their site early in the morning on Derby day:

“The good news is that you can wager on the Kentucky Derby today with XpressBet!. The bad news is that only one other race from Churchill Downs—the Woodford Reserve, the race before the Derby—will be available for wagering on XpressBet. And don’t bother checking around with other legal online ADWs (online wagering services). They won’t have any more than XpressBet. In fact, some of them don’t even offer wagering on the Derby.”

Oh well, I guess I’ll just tip that first Mint Julep a few hours later than normal and see if Big Brown, a horse that would have been 15-1 in the morning line up until just a few years ago, can live up to his ‘hype’ as the likely favorite in this year’s Derby.  Once again, It’s not a very inspiring crop of three-year-olds… but that is a subject matter for another column.

Sean Caffey has written for American Turf Monthly, Thoroughbred Times, and the Los Angeles Daily News.

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