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Epsom Derby Betting
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 The top online bookie
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The Epsom Derby is the pinnacle of the
Flat horse racing season. Here is the Epsom Derby betting from our
top four bookmakers (click on the betting odds to visit
that particular online bookie):
Epsom Derby Tip:
Midas Touch the value @ 13/2
The Derby is likely to be won by trainer Aidan O'Brien. He has the three favourites but it is his 'outsider' Midas Touch that we like
the look of at 13/2. Read on . .
Jan Vermeer impressed for O'Brien on his only start this season, the Gallinule Stakes in
Ireland but there is a doubt over the quality of his rivals that day.
Nevertheless, a lot of money has come for him which could be significant. He
is now favourite but surely is little value.
O'Brien has a better value
alternative with the Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial
Stakes victor, Midas Touch. Currently available, as shown in the
betting odds comparison table above, at a best price of
13/2 (Victor Chandler ). He was an easy winner of the race and has been confirmed for Epsom by the
Irish handler. The Derrinstown has twice been won by Aidan O'Brien charges
who have gone on to success at Epsom (High Chaparral and Galileo). He
looks the each-way value.
O'Brien also had
another handy sort in Cape Blanco, who won the Dante Stakes at York. He dented several reputations in
The Dante Stakes as he had Workforce (2nd), Coordinated Cut
(3rd) behind him that day. He is very likable but is now unlikely to run. His other
stablemate, Midas Touch is the attractive price.
Another who has to enter
calculations is the Lingfield Derby Trial hero, Bullet Train. The
well-bred Henry Cecil-trained son of Saddler's Wells attracted plenty of
admirers after a cosy win at the Surrey racecourse. You know this horse will get the Derby trip and a non-stayer would have no
chance of winning, so it's a big plus.
Favourites have good Derby record
Possibly the best online bookie to place your
Epsom Derby bets with is
Bet365. That firm offers the best sign-up offers,
a whopping £200,
and the best pl-te for each-way bets.
The Epsom Derby, always a
fierce betting heat, is on the first Saturday in June.
In Britain alone, two hundred million pounds is
generated on Epsom Derby Betting. It is unquestionably, the UK’s favourite
flat race. It has unrivalled status within the flat racing world. Every
jockey, trainer, owner and breeder wants to win it and every punter wants to
win it with them.
Over three million people watch the Epsom Derby on UK
TV (it is also shown in over two hundred other countries worldwide) and over
a hundred thousand people make the pilgrimage to Epsom Downs to watch it on
the day. The Epsom Derby boasts betting turnover larger than any single
race in the UK except the Grand National.
Does the Epsom Derby generate epic betting turnovers
because it is a race that anyone can supposedly win, like the National?
The Epsom Derby runners obviously do not have the
challenge of encountering previously unknown obstacles and, just as
significantly, having to avoid the other thirty nine horses and riders in
the race who may have come to grief less than a stride in front of them.
Conventional form is pretty unlikely to be confounded by a pile up.
It’s no surprise then that, in the past ten years,
forty percent of the winners have been favourites or joint favourites. The
other sixty percent in that time period came from the top half of the
market. So it has been a good race for the punters. That said, four 100-1
shots have prevailed in the past but the most recent was a very long time
ago, back in nineteen thirteen. Over the past ten years, the average price
in the betting of the Epsom Derby winner has been just under 5-1.
In two thousand and eight, a horse called Maidstone
Mixture started at two hundred and fifty to one in the Epsom Derby betting
market but had been offered at odds as long as a thousand to one, ante-post.
It had a few bookmakers, especially those well represented in Kent (the
county in which the town of Maidstone and the horse’s owner is situated).
The long price had attracted a large volume of small bets that could
reportedly have cost bookmakers forty million pounds.
They need not have worried. It was a free giveaway for
the bookies, the horse should really have been a million to one and not
allowed to sully the great race. After racing prominently early on in the
race, the horse finished last of the sixteen runners, tailed off by nearly
forty lengths. The seven to two favourite, Casual Conquest, also failed to
impress and finished third as New Approach claimed victory at the price of
five to one.
First run in seventeen eighty, the Epsom Derby is one
of the world’s longest established horse races. Of the English Classics,
only the St Leger is older, stealing a head start circa seventeen seventy
six.
According to the record books, the name of the race was
decided on the toss of a coin between friends – the twelfth Earl of Derby
and Sir Charles Bunbury – both of whom wanted to create a contest to test
the best three year old racehorses. The Earl of Derby obviously won the toss
on the naming of the race (or it would have been known as ‘The Bunbury’
rather than The Derby) but Sir Charles’ horse, Diomed, triumphed in the
inaugural running over a mile across the Epsom Downs.
The race distance may have changed to one mile four
furlongs, but the rule about three year old contestants (colts and fillies)
has remained unaltered. Because of that age restriction, we are obviously
denied repeat performances from the main players, the horses. There can be
no equivalent of the Grand National multi-race winning hero horses like Red
Rum to help promote the Epsom Derby’s popularity.
Fortunately there are no such age restrictions on the
Epsom Derby jockeys. Some have built a formidable record in the race, most
notably Lester Piggott with nine victories. He achieved his first Epsom
Derby success at just eighteen years of age in nineteen fifty four with
Never Say Die and his ninth almost thirty years later in nineteen eighty
three on Teenoso. More recently, Mick Kinane won the two thousand and nine
Epsom Derby, his third, on Sea The Stars, at the age of fifty. He has now
also retired.
Are there jockeys riding now who are worth following to
help you to achieve Epsom Derby betting success?
Possibly. In the past ten years both Kieren Fallon and
Johnny Murtagh have achieved three victories. Neither has won exclusively
for a single trainer although two of Fallon’s successes were achieved on
board Sir Michael Stoute’s horses. Whoever rides for Aidan O’Brien has,
you would think, to stand a good chance of repeated success. O’Brien saddled
six of the twelve runners in two thousand and nine, but his two thousand and
nine Epsom Derby favourite, Fame and Glory (sent off at nine to four), was
famously beaten by the brilliant John Oxx-trained Sea the Stars (second favourite at eleven to four).
That year’s Epsom Derby also demonstrates that you
might be better off trusting the betting market rather than the stable
jockey’s judgement when it comes to picking the best of the Aidan O’Brien
runners. Murtagh chose to ride the 6-1 shot, Rip Van Winkle, who finished
behind not just O’Brien’s Fame and Glory but Masterofthehorse too, giving
him an unexpected rear view of both Heffernan and Hughes at the finishing
line.
The favourite in the
Epsom Derby betting market
this year is Jan Vermeer. Murtagh will be partnering the Aidan O’Brien
trained hotpot but, unlike the
previous year, there is not another fancied horse snapping at his heels in
the betting market.
History has proven that three year olds can be unpredictable, fragile
creatures so the value seekers will be sharpening their pencils to make
alternative selections. Each-way and place bets are
currently looking more interesting than usual with a quarter of the odds
being offered on horses filling the first three places in the Epsom Derby
betting by some bookmakers like
Bet365.
Our
No.1 for Epsom Derby betting odds:
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