Kentucky is in the spotlight all this week

What used to be referred to as the “Fastest two minutes in Sports” as well as the “Most exciting two minutes in Sports”, the Kentucky Derby put our state front and center for a few minutes a century and an half ago and this Saturday afternoon, eyes from across the world will once again be focused on Louisville’s Churchill Downs for the “Run for the Roses.”

For the past several years, Churchill Downs and Metro Jefferson County/Louisville, have successfully stretched out the lure of the Kentucky Derby to several weeks of tourism related activities.

A parade, fireworks show, air show and a host of races around the city that have nothing to do with horses, have stretched the event out to a profitable several week long run.

They’ve even expanded the race attractiveness to include a Thursday lineup of races and an all day “All Things Kentucky” showcase at Churchill Downs, featuring bourbon, racing and Bluegrass music.

But, for the purpose of this column, let’s focus on the “Run for the Roses”.

First things first, post time for this 149th Kentucky Derby will be 5:57 p.m. central time. Tune to NBC for Derby coverage as well as the Churchill spectacle throughout the day Saturday.

It’s no secret that I like to make a small wager from time to time on the horses, especially round the Big Three races, the Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes if the Derby winner is still in contention for a Triple Crown run.

For years, my betting rules were the horse I liked the best to win, the horse with the best name, and any horse that Pat Day was riding.

With Day retiring several years ago, the rules have since gone out the window, and I actually try to study the field a little leading up to this final pre-Derby Turnovers writing.

So, here goes.

First of all, the best name in the field as of Tuesday morning is Raise Cain, a long shot with a 50-1 early line, which makes him even more fun to have a couple of bucks on.

Cain is a Kentucky born horse trained by Ben Colebrook and owned by Andrew and Rania Warren, and will break out of the gate from the 16 position.

At the very least, put two dollars on Raising Cain to Show.

Now for the next bet, I had normally switched my earlier Pat Day allegiance to any horse Bob Baffert had trained, but that won’t work either this year.

With Baffert having to sit out of all Churchill Downs racing for the first half of this season over a failed drug test by 2021 Derby winner Medina Spirit, I’m going to switch my next bet(s) to any horse trained by Todd Pletcher.

That gives us a three-way on the next bet because the two time Derby winning trainer has three horses in this year’s field – Forte, the overall favorite coming out of the 15 gate position is a 3-1 entry as of Tuesday, Tapit Trice will be starting out of one of the coveted gate positions, the No. 5 spot and is the second favorite at 5-1.

Finally, Pletcher has also trained Kingsbarns, a 12-1 entry coming out of the adjacent gate position as Tapit Trice. Kingsbarns might be my outside favorite, being a Kentucky horse also coming out of Spendthrift Farms.

There you have it – pick the best of those three and plop down $6, or just splurge this year and go for the whole $8 wager – that’s what I’m going to do.

Next week, we’ll see how we came out.

And they’re off . . .