Here’s your inside track to understanding – and enjoying – the 151st Kentucky Derby
The Kentucky Derby, "the most exciting two minutes in sports," has offered endless moments of high excitement since its first run 151 years ago.
Held at Churchill Downs, the nation’s premier horse racing event continues to attract dedicated fans and casual spectators alike. Viewers are drawn to the race’s pageantry, history – and money.
This year’s Run for the Roses will offer a purse of $5 million, the same as in 2024, race organizers announced in January. That's still an increase of $2 million over recent years.
The Derby’s allure continues, despite accusations of horse doping in 2021 and the deaths of two horses in 2023.
What makes the Kentucky Derby so popular?
The thrill of the race is the overall passion of the Derby, of course. But there's also race history, manifested in fandom by Secretariat, the almost mystical champion racehorse known as Big Red who ruled the tracks in the mid-1970s.
Even those who don't follow horse racing have heard of Secretariat, who won racing's Triple Crown – the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes – in 1973. He's the champion against which all other race horses are measured.
How impressive was Secretariat? His records include:
- Fastest Kentucky Derby: 1 minute, 59.40 seconds.
- Fastest Preakness Stakes: 1 minute, 53 seconds.
- Fastest Belmont Stakes: 2 minutes, 24 seconds.
Secretariat died in 1989 and was buried in Paris, Kentucky. His legend endures; he has more than 260 streets named after him, according to an ESPN review in 2020.
The Kentucky Derby track is 1¼ miles long, or 2,200 yards. Since 1974, the Derby has allowed 20 horses to compete in the event.
Horses line up at a 65-foot starting gate that stretches across the track. The gate has a stall for each horse. Stalls are known as posts or post positions.
Post positions are important. The 5th or 10th posts are the most popular, because more winners start from them than in any other position, analysis shows.
Gate positions are determined by points earned in the Road to the Kentucky Derby, a series of races at tracks in the U.S. and around the world, kentuckyderby.com says.
The top five finishers in each race earn points. The 20 horses with the most points get a starting gate post.
This year, Journalism is viewed as the favorite, with other contenders such as Sovereignty and Sandman also in the mix.
Source USA TODAY Network reporting and research; courier-journal.com; kentuckyderby.com; Reuters
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