Less than one week from the 136th running of the Kentucky Derby, “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” was dealt a bit of sobering news: Eskendereya, the expected favorite to win, will not race.
Kentucky Derby Favorite Eskendereya Will Not Race
The decision was made Sunday morning, and is the result of an injury to his left leg.
“Yesterday morning I noticed a little bit of filling in his left front leg,” [Trainer Todd] Pletcher said. “We looked at and worked on it overnight but didn’t see any improvement. He’s too special of a horse to take any chances.
“Basically his left leg is filled from his ankle up to the knee,” he said. “We need to get some of that edema out of there before we can do any diagnostics. He’s not uncomfortable. I got him out early this morning on the asphalt and jogged him, and for me, he was slightly off.”
SB Nation’s horse racing blog, And Down The Stretch They Come, offers its take on this surprising and disappointing news.
This is a major shake-up in the Derby field. First, it will allow one more horse to get in that was on the fringe. Second, I think this will create an even more wide open betting race. The odds will be lower on some horses there is going to be no heavy favorite ("heavy" in Derby terms). Lookin At Lucky will almost certainly be the favorite at odds of somewhere around 3/1, in my esitimation. Finally, colts like Dublin, Endorsement, Noble's Promise, and Sidney's Candy will probably see their oddsdrop as a result of this scratch but without the presence of a 2/1 favorite (assuming that Lucky stays reasonably high), the exotic payouts should be fat in every pool regardless is you hit to the fav.
In the end, it's too bad Esky had to miss out of the Derby as I always want to see the best field that we can find. Even though I wasn't going to bet him to win, his presence would have help to send a bunch of horses that I like off at big odds.
While it still wasn’t official, Eskendereya was expected to be the easy favorite when then the 20-horse field is set on Wednesday. In fact, an oddsmaker said he could have made the odds as low as 9-5.
This is the second year in a row that the pre-race favorite had to scratch after I Want Revenge suffered the same unfortunate news the morning of the Derby in 2009.
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