Betting on the 2013 Kentucky Derby

Time to put your money where your mouth is – Mike Schultz makes his picks for this year’s Kentucky Derby!

Is this year Todd Pletcher takes some of that bad look off his record at the Kentucky Derby? Pletcher, one of the leading trainers of his generation, is 1-31 in the signature race of the year, with Super Saver his only victory in 2010. So why can’t Pletcher get it done at Churchill Downs?

He’s certainly giving it the old college try this year – Pletcher saddles five of the twenty horses who’ll run for the roses in a few hours’ time. Of the five, Verrazano and Revolutionary look like the pick of the bunch. Verrazano is undefeated over four races this year but cognoscenti who saw him win the Wood Memorial a month ago ahead of Vyjack and Norman Invasion are worried that Verrazano will have issues over the longer distance at Churchill Downs.

Only two winners of the Louisiana Derby have gone on to win the Kentucky Derby, but if anybody can do it Revolutionary can. Pletcher’s other top contender won in New Orleans earlier this year and has the immense advantage of having Calvin Borel on board. Borel is has won three of the last six Kentucky Derbies, and he’s a jockey known for his ability to ride along the rail – good news when you’ve drawn the three post, as Revolutionary has.

The horse everybody has been talking about in Louisville this week is Orb, trained by hall of famer Shug – his mother named him “Claude” – McGaughey. Like Verrazano, Orb has won his last four starts and looks like a horse who, if he’s positioned correctly on the turn, could blow the field away down the stretch.

The other thing that Orb could do is run well in the mud. Weather forecasts suggest anything from a fifty-fifty chance of precipitation to something that would impress Noah himself, and the formline suggests that Orb can handle the mud too. But then, so can Calvin Borel, jockey of Revolutionary.

You pay your money and you take your choice. The advice here is to do one of two things – either go for a quinella of Orb and Revolutionary to win and show in either order, or else take risk on the rain and chance a Kentucky Derby betting longshot on Itsmyluckyday, a horse with jets and ability to run the mud, but who has drifted in the betting after getting blown away in the Florida Derby. Maybe he can blow right back under the famous spires of Churchill Downs.