Kentucky Derby Results 2015: Race Recap and Analysis from Churchill Downs

This year's Kentucky Derby featured one of the best fields in recent memory. Fortunately, the group lived up to the hype, and this year's winner, American Pharoah, proved himself to be one of the best horses in a long time. 

The Pioneerof The Nile colt had a dominant showing over the 1 1/4 mile dirt track at Churchill Downs, and he ran down the second favorite, Dortmund, and the fourth choice, Firing Line, in impressive fashion.

AP will now move on to the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes, with a shot to make history as the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed back in 1978.

Before we can get into all of that though, we've got to look back at the 141st running of the Kentucky Derby, and break the whole thing down. But first, we've gotta look at the final order of finish and payouts first.

Final Order of Finish

Place	No.	Horse	Jockey	Trainer	Lengths
1	18	American Pharoah	Victor Espinoza	Bob Baffert	--
2	10	Firing Line	Gary Stevens	Simon Callaghan	1
3	8	Dortmund	Martin Garcia	Bob Baffert	3
4	15	Frosted	Joel Rosario	Kiaran McLaughlin	3 1/4
5	5	Danzig Moon	Julien Leparoux	Mark Casse	6 1/2
6	3	Materiality	Javier Castellano	Todd Pletcher	7 3/4
7	14	Keen Ice	Kent Desormeaux	Dale Romans	8 3/4
8	6	Mubtaahij	Cristophe Soumillon	Mike de Kock	9 1/2
9	13	Itsaknockout	Luis Saez	Todd Pletcher	10 1/4
10	2	Carpe Diem	John Velazquez	Todd Pletcher	11
11	21	Frammento	Corey Nakatani	Nick Zito	12
12	9	Bolo	Rafael Bejarano	Carla Gaines	12 3/4
13	17	Mr. Z	Ramon Vazquez	D. Wayne Lukas	15 1/2
14	1	Ocho Ocho Ocho	Elvis Trujillo	Jim Cassidy	15 1/2
15	20	Far Right	Mike Smith	Ron Moquett	15 3/4
16	16	War Story	Joe Talamo	Tom Amoss	19 1/4
17	4	Tencendur	Manny Franco	George Weaver	35
18	19	Upstart	Jose Ortiz	Rick Violette Jr.	60 1/2
	7	El Kabeir	Calvin Borel	John Terranova	SCR
	11	Stanford	Florent Geroux	Todd Pletcher	SCR
	12	International Star	Miguel Mena	Michael Maker	SCR

Payouts

Horse	Win	Place	Show
American Pharoah	$7.80	$5.80	$4.20
Firing Line	--	$8.40	$5.40
Dortmund	--	--	$4.20

Recap and Analysis

American Pharoah ran the perfect race, and Victor Espinoza was just along for the ride. To borrow a line from an earlier point in the NBC Brodcast (it came following the Pat Day Mile) sometimes you just need to be "a quiet passenger in the right place at the right time."

This was true of Victor Espinoza in the Derby as well.

Much was made about the outside post, and even more so when Pharoah moved into the 17 hole. The third scratch from the race—International Star—changed that though and AP bumped into the 16 position.

Maybe the race would've played out differently if he had stayed in the 17th post position, but with the way he ran today, probably not. Pharoah broke toward the front and Espinoza kept him very forwardly placed, sitting comfortably behind Dortmund and Firing Line.

Predictably, the pace was rather solid up front with Dortmund and Firing Line dueling to a quarter in 23.24 seconds. After a half mile in 47.34, and a three-length gap separating the leader (Dortmund) and the fourth-place runner (Carpe Diem) it started becoming very clear that this was a three horse race.

By the 3/4 mile mark, the gap between the lead group of Dortmund, Firing Line and AP stayed static at about three lengths, but AP began to close in on the leader. AP kicked five wide coming into the stretch, but there with a head full of steam, he wasn't going to be denied today.

At the 300-yard mark, AP had pulled even with Dortmund and Firing Line. From there, he showed an impressive drive as he moved ahead for a one-length victory (pictured below).

Dortmund, the third place finisher, nearly got run down by the hard-charging Tapit colt, Frosted. Frosted ran an impressive race in his own right, and could prove to be a worthy challenger to American Pharoah should they both make it to the Belmont stakes with a Triple Crown on the line.

That said, this was always American Pharoah's race to lose, and with the way he ran today, there was no chance of that happening.

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