American Pharoah won the 2015 Kentucky Derby, held Saturday under clear skies and the twin spires of Churchill Downs in Louisville. Firing Line finished in second, with Dortmund third.
American Pharoah wins the 2015 Kentucky Derby
After all the pageantry and all the hype, the 141st Kentucky Derby winner was crowned Saturday at Churchill Downs.
Dortmund set the pace early, hitting the 1/4 mile mark at 23.24 seconds, 1/2 mile at 47.34, and 3/4 at 1:11.29. American Pharoah, Firing Line and Dortmund battled down the stretch, with American Pharoah pulling ahead just before the finish. American Pharoah paid $7.80 on a $2 bet to win. Here are the full Kentucky Derby payouts.
The winning jockey was Victor Espinoza, who also won the Woodford Reserve Turf Classic, the final race of the Kentucky Derby undercard, in an exciting finish. Espinoza earned his third Kentucky Derby victory and second in a row after jockeying California Chrome in 2014.
Heading up to the race, American Pharoah and Dortmund were all the talk. Both trained by Bob Baffert, the two were betting favorites from the initial morning line right up through the moment they entered the gate. Dortmund came in with the more impressive set of results: a 6-0-0 career record and a victory in the 1-1/8-mile Santa Anita Derby in April. American Pharoah had won four of the five races he entered, including three Grade 1 stakes and most recently the Arkansas Derby.
Minds now turn to the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness, which will be run May 16 at Pimlico in Baltimore. Last year, California Chrome won the first two races and entered the Belmont with a chance to earn the first Triple Crown since Affirmed in 1978, but he finished fourth and failed to capture the crown. Before that, neither I’ll Have Another in 2012 nor Big Brown in 2008 even finished the final race.
The Derby set an attendance record with 170,517 on hand to watch.
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