The first weekend in May is always a big deal in Kentucky and has been for over a century. This Derby was a big deal for one man who misplaced his ticket. Boy was it a big deal and Chris Hertzog had a problem.
He bought a superfecta ticket for the Kentucky Derby with race winner Giacomo on a $1 bet. To win a superfecta, you have to pick the top four horses in the races in order. Hertzog bought 100 tickets at $1 each. Little did he know he would hit a winner.
He had dropped a couple of his tickets. Then he got lucky. The mutuel clerk Brenda Reagan had been informed that she had sold a winning ticket. Hertzog in the meantime, aware he had bought a winning ticket realized he didn’t have it. He and others poured through bags of garbage looking for his lucky little slip of paper. They could not find the winning ticket. Then he got lucky again.
Ms. Reagan found a couple of tickets that didn’t get thrown away by her machine that prints tickets. One of them happened to be Mr. Hertzog’s ticket. Mr. Hertzog was most fortunate. The ticket paid $864,253.50 and after taxes $604,000. I bet Ms. Reagan gets a thank you card.
The 2005 Run for the Roses will go down as one of the great Derbies because of the longshots. Giacomo won at 50-1 odds. Closing Argument placed at 72-1 and Afleet Alex showed at 4.5-1. Fourth place was Don’t Get Mad at 30-1. It’s the second biggest upset in the history of the Derby and certainly the biggest pay out. No one bet a $2 superfecta. It would’ve paid $1.7 million.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
