Kentucky Derby 2022 odds: Everything you need to know about Run for the Roses
By Andy Serling
FOX Sports Horse Racing Analyst
The Kentucky Derby will be run for the 148th time Saturday at Churchill Downs in Louisville. Twenty horses will leave the starting gate at approximately 7 p.m. ET for the historic 1 ¼-mile race.
None of these horses have ever raced this far or faced a field this large, and none will likely ever do it again. The winner will become a household name overnight, while many others will probably race in relative obscurity for the rest of their careers.
The Kentucky Derby rarely disappoints, so let's dive into everything you need to know about the first leg of the Triple Crown, from the trainers and jockeys to the betting odds.
In this year's race, four of the trainers have at least one previous Kentucky Derby winner.
Wayne Lukas, who trains long shot Ethereal Road, has won the Derby four times, though not since 1999. Trainers Todd Pletcher and Doug O'Neill have won it twice.
Pletcher has three horses in this year's race, the likeliest winner of these being Mo Donegal. He is perhaps the most celebrated trainer of the last quarter-century, having entered the Racing Hall of Fame last year in his first year of eligibility. Beyond Pletcher's immense success on the racetrack, he will be remembered for the significant number of successful stallions he has trained. In fact, five of this year's Derby runners are sired (fathered) by Pletcher-trained horses.
Brad Cox — who trained Mandaloun, last year's winner via disqualification — also has three runners in the race, Cyberknife being his top contender.
The two horses expected to vie for favoritism, Epicenter and Zandon, are trained by Steve Asmussen and Chad Brown. Asmussen is the all-time leading trainer with almost 10,000 career wins, while Brown has been named the top U.S. trainer in four of the past six years.
While Asmussen and Brown have established themselves as two of the best ever, neither of them has won a Kentucky Derby. A victory here would significantly enhance their reputations. And mathematically, given their two runners will take almost 50% of the betting action, it's close to a 50/50 coin flip that one of them will be a winner this year.
Hopefully, when one of these trainers meets people outside the racing industry after Saturday, the answer to the first question they are invariably asked will be, "yes."
On the flip side, Tim Yakteen, who trains Taiba and Messier, has never started a horse in the Derby.
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On the jockey front, only two have won multiple races: John Velasquez (three), who will ride Messier, and Mike Smith (two), who rides Taiba.
Then there are Joel Rosario, Florent Geroux and Flavien Prat (who have all won the race once). Of the three, only Rosario won it while crossing the line first (Orb in 2013). Oddly, the other two won it via disqualification in 2021 and 2019, respectively.
Luis Saez, who rides Charge It, finished first in 2019 aboard Maximum Security, only to be disqualified less than half an hour later for interference. John Velasquez finished first for the fourth time in 2021 aboard Medina Spirit, only to see that horse disqualified many months later for a medication violation.
While more than half of the riders in this year's race can be considered the very best in their profession, there is no substitute for experience. Prior success in major races could be regarded as an advantage, but the most important thing is always the horse underneath them.
Speaking of the stars of the show, Epicenter and Zandon are the current betting favorites. Both are expected to go off at relatively short odds to win the race, between 3-1 and 4-1, respectively.
As for racing styles, they are almost opposites. Epicenter does his best running on or near the lead, while Zandon has been effective this year coming from the back of the pack. This could work better for Epicenter in a large field like the Derby as he can dictate how the race is run in ways that Zandon cannot.
Both horses come into this week with established credentials including impressive wins in their final Derby preps.
Epicenter won his last two starts, the Risen Star (where Zandon finished third) followed by the Louisiana Derby, where he set a track record going one mile and three-sixteenths, a rarely run distance but also the distance of the Preakness Stakes — the second leg of the Triple Crown following the Derby.
Zandon followed up his third-place finish in the Risen Star — his seasonal debut — with an impressive win in the Blue Grass Stakes, run at Keeneland. He overcame a trip to rally from dead-last with less than one-half mile remaining. Zandon has also been working exceptionally well leading up to this year's Run for the Roses.
On that subject, the Derby was first run in front of approximately 10,000 people on May 17, 1875, the brainchild of Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. (grandson of William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame). The event is known as the Run for the Roses because the winning horse receives a lush blanket of 554 red roses. This ritual stems from Mr. Clark declaring roses the official flower of the Derby in 1883, and the rest is history.
Hopefully, the tidbits above will help jump-start your quest to make money on this year's Kentucky Derby. Be sure to check back later this week, where, for better or worse, I'll share my thoughts on who to bet, who not to bet and some ideas on how to bet the most decorated leg of the Triple Crown. And, yes, we will discuss the pageantry, mint juleps and Bob Baffert, too.
Stay tuned!
Andy Serling is the Senior Racing Analyst for the New York Racing Association (NYRA) and appears regularly on America's Day at the Races/Saratoga Live on FOX Sports. He also analyzes the races daily on Talking Horses on the NYRA simulcast network among other duties covering Saratoga, Belmont and Aqueduct. In his slightly more respectable days, he traded options on the now-defunct American Stock Exchange. Follow him on Twitter @andyserling.
