Sports Biz

Published: Monday, 4 May 2009 | 10:54 AM ET

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AP Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird

The story of Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird is pretty amazing. The horse’s trek from New Mexico, owners from Roswell and the jockey Calvin Borel, who only two years removed from a Kentucky Derby win couldn’t find a high-profile ride.

Throw out the $9,500 myth - the horse was last sold for $400,000, which is relatively close to the average selling price of this year’s Derby horse -– and the biggest story from Saturday’s race are the people who bet on Mine That Bird to win.

Only $435,282 was bet on Mine That Bird to win, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. That’s out of a total race handle of $104,563,501.

So while everyone always says to throw the money on the longshots, that didn’t happen. Only 0.4 percent of the money went to Mind That Bird, who went off at 50-to-1.

There were 23 people who correctly bet that Mine That Bird would win, followed by Pioneerof the Nile, Musket Man and Papa Clem. Their $1 superfecta bets will pay to the tune of $278,503, before taxes of course.

It’s the biggest $1 superfecta payoff since 2005, when Giacomo’s underdog win yielded an incredible $864,253 to the seven lucky winners.

This is actually one of the few years where you could have actually bet every Superfecta combination and still made money. If you bet $1 on every combination of the 19 horses, you would have only spent $93,024. But if you did this for every Derby, you’d lose most of the time. Heading into this year, the average $1 superfecta win was worth $106,583, and with 20 horses in the field you would have spent $116,280.

At 2:45 p.m. ET today, I’ll have a live interview with Bowen Ross Wallace, who thus far has been the only identified superfecta winner. Wallace, who lives in Tilden, Texas, bought his ticket at Retama Park in San Antonio.

Questions?  Comments? 

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