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God help me, I love an upset, and the 135th Kentucky Derby delivered. Now I'm not a ponies man, but at Club One Casino in Fresno, we have a satellite wagering facility and this year set up our Event Center for a Kentucky Derby party. When the favorite, I Want Revenge, was scratched early, I expected a yawner. Uh, no.

Stunning the crowd of 150,000+ and viewers worldwide, a 50 to 1 shot, Mine That Bird, dawdled through the first minute and a half of the race and then promptly and summarily CRUSHED the field. To give you a sense of just how unthinkable this was, consider this. Every "expert" had him out of contention with comments such as "Too slow to be a factor" and "Faces an extreme class hike." The field gave him a similar treatment.

Rudely bumped out of the gate, the gelding was dead last at the quarter mile point, almost 7 lengths behind the field. At the halfway point, he was still last and going nowhere. At the start of the back stretch, he wasn’t even in the WIDE ANGLE camera shot of the field. He then turned into a crazed equine dervish and made the other 18 horses look like trotters. It was AWESOME to watch.

If you watch the video below, at 34 seconds in, you’ll see a horse at the bottom of the frame well behind the last horse. That’s your eventual winner. At 56 seconds, he just comes into the picture still way behind. At 1:23 there’s a wide angle shot. Nope, he’s not in the picture. Then at 1:37, you’ll see a horse flying along the rail blowing through the field. The announcer doesn’t even mention Mine That Bird heading to the finish until he’s the obvious winner. You can almost tell he's got his hand over the mike, turning to the other guys in the press box mouthing "What the fuck?"



It was as improbable as if one of our Asian dealers wandered into the middle of a bar fight sipping a cocktail, got bumped by some brute and started picking guys up, spinning them overhead and tossing them into the park across the street. Awesome stuff.

Edmond