Jeff Johnson Picks Your Bets - Derby Diary Part 2.1

The world’s longest Bob Nastanovich interview, in which:

He tells us where he is.
He tells us what he does.
He tells us who to bet on and how to bet in the year’s Kentucky Derby.
He gives us a history of recent Derbys.
He tells us about Pavement’s reunion plans.

Vice: What’s your current involvement with the races? Bob Nastanovich: I was living on the backstretch at the Meadowlands race track in New Jersey for seven weeks last year calling the charts for Equibase. That’s my main job now. During horse races, I look through binoculars and call the positions of the horses on the track at various poles. Basically all the information that’s in the program or the racing form, we compile. Right now I’m working in Des Moines.

Does that get stressful?
There’s a lot of poles and a lot of horses.
The only time it’s stressful is if there are 12 horses in a six-furlong race, or if it’s a very important race. I called the Illinois Derby recently and my boss came up from Lexington for it. That’s tough. But like any other job, really, once you’ve done it, you settle into a groove.

Do you think you’ll rove from track to track or stay put? Is the nature of the job to go to different tracks?

Yeah. So far I’ve been to Turfway in Cincinnati, Beulah in Columbus, Hawthorne in Chicago, Meadowlands in Jersey, and in Iowa. They move me around a lot, but that was the first year. Now I should, until further notice, go back and forth between Prairie Meadows here in Des Moines and Hawthorne in South Chicago. It’s a perfect schedule for me—five months here, five months there, seven weeks off every winter.

What’s the best advice you’d give to someone who doesn’t get into horse racing 40-odd weeks a year, but gets very excited right now? There’s an awful lot of information to distill.

Right. I’m a huge fan of English horse racing—their coverage is so superior to the coverage of horse racing we have. It has to do with the fact that, as you said, horse racing here is pretty far down the list in terms of it’s significance in American sports. If you’re going to a Derby party and want to read up, I’d say try Blood Horse. They have a guy called Steve Haskin who’s been a Derby enthusiast and handicapper for many years. He keeps a very good top ten, and he’s always at Churchill for the two weeks leading up to the Derby. He’s a good interviewer.

I volunteer for a website called Love Da Goat. Me and my buddy Mark Estrich do podcasts every week leading up to the Derby there. And then there’s always The Daily Racing Forum. And if you get really into it, there’s a lot of horse racing blogs—just google “horse racing blogs.”

Will you make it to the Derby this year?

I was there for 15 straight years, and last year was the first time I missed one. The Kentucky Derby is such a big day at every racetrack that if you work a job like this, it would be very exceptional for me to attend a Derby.

I really enjoyed the Derby last year, because I didn’t have to look after 100 partying people for 96 hours. I actually got to relax and enjoy it. Being a Derby host takes a lot out of you. [Bob owns a house across the street from Churchill Downs] We’d get so excited, we’d start getting ready two weeks in advance. We basically had an open house, and there’d be some years we’d have 20 to 25 people sleeping in an 1100-square-foot space. God knows the alcohol that got consumed in there. It’s amazing that the place is still standing. The first ten years I did it, it was terrific, and the last few, was something I looked forward to less and less, cause it was such a barrage of misbehavior.

Do you have any favorites this year?

Yes, there’s a horse called Adriano, who recently won a race at Turfway Park—the same race that Hard Spun who finished second in last year’s Derby won impressively. Adriano’s an imposing chestnut colt, by AP Indy out of a Mr. Prospector mare so there won’t be a better bred horse in the starting gate that day. And he did it very easily. He crossed the line and I was in the Hawthorne press box and I said, “There’s your Derby winner and they said, “Oh, get out of here.” I said, “Why not?”

This is a wide-open year. Not like last year when we had four or five exceptional horses—even the first twelve were great. And the top four were just outstanding: Street Sense, Hardspun and Curlin, obviously, and Rags to Riches who won the Oaks and the Belmont. They were four of the best three year-olds in recent memory. The drama was unbelievable.

2007 Kentucky Derby

The pure joy of the jockey, Calvin Borel, after the race was unusual, something you just don’t see in sports. This is a guy who I’ve known for many years, a Cajun with a very modest upbringing. Hardest working guy at the racetrack, and he finally got his moment.

Calvin Borel vs. Bobby Boucher

Adriano fits the mold of some recent winners. He’s trained by a young English guy called Graham Motion. He’s a very conservative trainer and he wouldn’t put this horse in the race if he didn’t think he had a very live chance.

The other thing—and I don’t usually give too much credence to jockeys—is Edgar Prado had the choice of about four or five contenders in the race and he chose this horse.

Why no credence to jockeys?
To me they’re all good. When you get to the top level, 95%+ of them are good these days. They all screw up and they all do great.

When jockeys are doing well, I believe that the confidence transfers to the animal. There’s no doubt about it. And when they’re doing badly, sometimes they try too hard and get in a rut, just like all the other sports. If you’re in the Kentucky Derby, you’re a top-class rider.

I got a decent bet on Adriano at 40 to 1 odds after he won the race at Turfway. They have about three or four different weekends where you can bet Derby horses (for futures bets), I actually have mine on an off-shore sports wagering site. I’m locked in at 40 to 1. I expect the horse to be anywhere between 10 and 20 to 1 on Derby day. The overwhelming favorite is going to be an undefeated horse called Big Brown, who is very, very fast. I couldn’t argue with anybody who likes him, but I don’t like any horse in this race at 3 to 1, I think that’s what he’s gonna be.

You should never bet on a horse at 3 to 1, right? You gotta mix it up, and try an exacta, or trifecta box, some exotic wager?
It depends on the year, really. ‘Cause Smarty Jones, I thought there was no way he could get beat, and at 4 to 1, I thought that was good value. This year, the race to me is so wide open, that yeah, you should advise people to pick a few or make a box wager. To me it’s more like 2005 when Giacomo won and paid a hundred dollars. You asked me what was the worst Derby in recent memory, and to me it was the year that War Emblem won. Nothing happened! All the horses behind War Emblem pretty much stayed in their same positions the entire race.

2002 Kentucky Derby

What happened was, the year before in 2001, a horse called Songandaprayer, who is now a very good stallion went an incredibly fast half mile in the Derby. And the race completely fell apart and Monarchos came flying from the back about twenty lengths off of it, and won!

The next year, it’s like the jockeys said, “Well, we’re not gonna send this year,” and the pace was so pedestrian that War Emblem got away with murder on the front end. All the horses stayed in place—it looked like a steeplechase race for the first quarter mile. So the jockey, Victor Espinosa says, “OK, you’re giving me this easy lead, I can set the tempo. You’re giving me a helluva chance to win.”

Now, as for the rest of the favorites: You’ll have to excuse his flop the other day at Keeneland, but I still think Pyro is an outstanding horse. He’s been training for most of the year with Curlin, who is the best horse in the world, at least on dirt. And that’s Pyro’s stable mate. And if they think he’s good enough to train and do serious work with Curlin, I have a lot of respect for that.

I think Pyro is a very gifted horse who just ran a bad race, and that happens. War Pass [who was injured and withdrew] was a great champion and a great two year-old, who proved difficult to train, and he proved that he couldn’t really overcome adversity. I was disappointed to see him get scratched, ‘cause I would have bet against him.

JEFF JOHNSON

PS: The second half of this interview is coming a little later. Be patient.