Epsom Derby 2013 Winner: Team Approach Helps Ruler of the World Secure Victory

Horse-betting neophytes like myself learned a ton from last month's Preakness, no lesson more vital than this: Don't always bank on the heavy favorite. That makeshift idiom probably isn't right all the time, but it proved true again on Saturday, as Ruler of the World (and all 10 other posted horses) beat heavy favorite Dawn Approach in the 2013 Investec Derby at Epsom.

Ruler of the World was a 7-1 shot before the race, aptly regarded as Aidan O’Brien’s B-horse or second-best shot of winning. Which is hardly meant as a slight: O'Brien brought five of his horses into the race from Ballydoyle in County Tipperary, almost half of the derby's participants.

And though horse racing is thought of as a uniquely individual sport—that is, each horse and jockey has thorough incentive to win the race for him/herself—it was actually a rare bit of teamwork that helped spring Ruler of the World into the winner's circle on Saturday.

Or at least it's what kept Dawn Approach so far away from it.

Jim Bolger's high-pedigree colt, you see, wasn't just a favorite for Saturday's race. He was a heavy favorite—5-4 odds imply that he's nearly a 50-50 shot to win. And though there were questions about his stamina coming in, those concerns were quelled with an impressive victory at the 2,000 Guineas Stakes.

After that race, according to Marcus Armytage of Telegraph, bookmakers "had been virtually running a one-horse book on the race" since Dawn Approach won at Guineas. Everybody had faith in him, and hardly anyone had faith in a single other thoroughbred. 

But they underestimated the power of Aiden O'Brien, who's stable of five horses would work in unison to push Dawn Approach out of his rhythm. Jonathan Powell of the Daily Mail elucidated some of their tactics:

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[Aiden] O’Brien’s 20-year-old son Joseph set a cunningly sedate pace on second favourite Battle Of Marengo. And if the plan was to unsettle the free-running Dawn Approach it could hardly have worked better.

The latter was in trouble from the first furlong as he did his best to ruin his chances by attempting to run faster than Usain Bolt.

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Battle of Marengo—O'Brien's A-horse, at least according to the books—set a pace that was not auspicious to Dawn Approach, a supremely talented horse who may not have had the proper temperament for a race of this distance. Epsom was by far the longest race of his career, and by frustrating him early, O'Brien all but sealed his fate for a last-place finish.

As the Daily Mail continues to explain:

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From the start, he [Dawn Approach] tried to pull Kevin Manning’s arms out of their sockets. Manning is one of the strongest jockeys in the business, but on Saturday he seemed powerless to hold the horse.

You need to settle and relax if you want to win the Derby, but Dawn Approach was shaking his head from side to side in frustration as Manning desperately tried to rein him back in the forlorn hope of preserving something for the finish.

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Considering the form these horses are in and the training they're subject to, it's easy to think of them like machines. We even reference their likeness in our own mechanical driving apparatuses.

But that line of reason is inherently flawed and potentially dangerous. These are animals, just like me and you. They're capable of getting frustrated and flustered, susceptible to the dangerous upshots of emotion.

Aiden O'Brien's team realized that on Sunday, goading the race's heavy favorite into a dead-last finish. So it's only fitting that Ruler of the World, one of his preponderance of entrants, rode that strategy to triumph.