The Kentucky Derby is the most consistent — and unpredictable — event in sports

Horse racingThe Kentucky Derby is the most consistent — and unpredictable — event in sportsWhile some heavy favorites have won the race, many longshots like Rich Strike in 2022 show anything is possible at Churchill Downs. Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Horses train beneath the Twin Spires during morning workouts ahead of the running of the 152nd Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on Monday in Louisville, Ky. Michael Reaves / Getty ImagesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleApril 29, 2026, 4:14 PM EDTBy Tim Layden, NBC SportsThe first Kentucky Derby I covered was in 2002 for Sports Illustrated, replacing the great Bill Nack, the type of writer you never want to follow onto a beat. However, there was no line outside the editor’s office, and I had been writing about racing on and off since the late 1970s because my early jobs were near Saratoga and my intermediate stop was in New York, where newspapers also cared about racing until the last decade or so. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.That Derby was won by War Emblem, a small-boned speedball who stole the race on the front end after having been sold by his geriatric owner to Saudi Arabian Prince Ahmed bin Salman for $900,000 three weeks before. Asked in the post-race press conference if he had “bought the Derby,” the Prince said, “Everybody buys the Derby.”A year later, Funny Cide’s owners bought the Derby for $75,000, including $5,000 each from high school buddies from a small town in the upstate New York hinterlands. Two years, two wildly different tales. And ever since, the Kentucky Derby is the most static and reliable piece of the American sports calendar. It has been contested almost annually without interruption since 10 years after the end of the Civil War, and on the first Saturday in May for almost a century. It will be attended by roughly 150,000 fans, kings and commoners, wearing hats and drinking mint juleps.So you can count on...