After reading this news report about Sonny Leon, who won the 2022 Kentucky Derby on Rich Strike, it doesn’t look good for him. The report says that Leon has been suspended 5 times since September 2021 for aggressive riding. This usually means blocking other horses or overuse of the whip. I found it disturbing that Rich Strike was so agitated after finishing the race. With the revaluation that Leon has had multiple recent suspensions for being an aggressive rider, I think Leon’s ride in the derby needs to be re-examined with this in mind. Now I understand why the horse was upset after the race. There must have been some funny business going on.
Maybe I’m just trying to find an explanation for an unexpected outcome. I briefly considered placing a wager on Rich Strike when I saw the odds at 80 to 1. But I had only briefly looked at the horse’s stats and nobody had even mentioned him as a possible contender. After the derby, I looked at his last races and saw improving speed figures in each race. This is a detail that I often look for. The other problem was that TVG was having issues. Several hours before the race, my account balance was showing zero dollars. I had placed my wagers in the morning and I told myself that was all I was going to do, knowing that TVG has had problems during the Derby in past years.
The day after the Derby I saw hundreds of complaints on TVG’s Facebook page. Most people were unable to place a wager in the hours before the race. TVG blamed the problem on a “3rd party”, but their system was clearly overwhelmed and was unable to handle the large number of connections. I’ve been at tracks on big race days and the same thing happens when you have thousands of people all trying to place a wager just before the start of a race. 2020 and 2021 were unusual years for the Derby. 2020’s race was held in September and 2021’s race had restricted attendance because of the pandemic. 2022’s race returned to normal and TVG’s system wasn’t prepared for it. I imagine it would be very expensive to fix an Internet traffic problem that only happens once a year. TVG did acknowledge the issue and tried to compensate users for the trouble. My account was credited $10 a few days after the race.