The Kentucky Derby annually brings together the best three year old horses in the sport. The race is attended by over a hundred thousand fans with millions watching around the world and the expectation is that 2014 Kentucky Derby betting will set an all time record. Top trainer Bob Baffert has had plenty of success in the Kentucky Derby but this weekend he outlined an idea for three year olds that might not quite be ready for the big race–a ‘NIT Derby’ on the undercard.
The ‘NIT Derby’ makes reference to the NIT basketball tournament, which is the top college basketball tournament for teams that don’t make the ‘Big Dance’–the NCAA basketball tournament. Baffert would like something similar on Kentucky Derby day in the form of a race for the second tier of three year olds. With the new Kentucky Derby qualification process it would be easy to set a field–just open the ‘NIT Derby’ to the #21 through #40 horses on the Derby points qualification standings.
Baffert thinks the idea would be great not only for horsemen but the sport:
“I’d like to see them have an undercard with another three-year-old race worth $500,000. Call it the NIT Derby or whatever. Run it at a mile and an eighth for the guys who want to be here on the big day. Everybody likes to be here on the big day. They’d probably have another 20 in there. It’d be a good gambling race. I think it’d really jive up the Triple Crown a little bit.”
Baffert suggests that the race could replace the Derby Trial which has become irrelevant:
“They actually could eliminate the Derby Trial. It’d probably be a better race.”
Baffert says that he hasn’t pitched the idea to the power brokers at Churchill Downs:
“No. I have to fight for tickets. I have to grovel for tickets. It has to be their idea. It cannot be my idea.”
Baffert will enter a longshot horse named Chitu in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. No doubt he was thinking that the ‘NIT Derby’ would have been a perfect fit for Bayern, his hard luck horse that didn’t qualify for the race.