Ecton Blade Win The 2018 Korean Derby
Ecton Blade, a 3-year-old son of the Kentucky-bred Ecton Park, won the $937,000 Korean Derby on Sunday at Seoul Race Course by three lengths, rewarding the relatively few backers who had made the horse the win-pool favorite in the 10-horse field.
Ecton Blade went to post at 2.10-to-1 in the 1,800-meter Derby, favored over the 3.70-to-1 Divide Wind, a horse who had beaten Ecton Blade in a 1,600-meter prep for the Derby on April 8 by three-quarters of a length. Divide Wind, a son of South Korea’s leading stallion Menifee, also a Kentucky-bred, finished fourth. Mask, an 11-1 shot, finished second, while Choinma, another colt sired by Menifee, finished third.
The Korean Derby anchors the most popular race card of the year in Korea, a country attempting to build a homegrown racing industry in the shadow of neighbors Hong Kong and Japan. Though handle on Korean races still dwarfs the numbers put up by those two racing behemoths, betting on nearly 300 cards at Korea’s three racecourses still totals approximately $7.7 billion a year, according to the Korean Racing Authority, a government agency that runs racing in the country and owns a handful of stallions here.
According to the latest KRA figures, nearly half of that $7.7 billion is bet in the quinella pools, a wager that has largely become irrelevant in U.S. Thoroughbred racing over the past two decades. But far more surprising is the amount of money that Korean bettors wager on win and show bets, and that’s because they bet nearly nothing in those pools – annual win wagering is less than 1 percent of total annual handle, and show betting is approximately 1.3 percent of the total betting. The rest is bet in exacta pools, two different trifecta pools, and a quinella that requires the bettor to select two of the first three finishers.
Weather for this year’s Korean Derby was pleasant, and racegoers streamed in and out of the six-story facility throughout the day. Most pored over numbers contained in various tabloid-size racing publications sold in and around Seoul and compared those published figures with the estimated payouts for the quinella and trifecta bets that scrolled endlessly throughout the day on in-house monitors and the infield tote board, said to be the largest tote screen in the world.
While bettors in Korea are given non-stop information on potential betting payouts in the lead-up to the race, data on horses’ past performances are basic, especially when compared to the amount of data available in North America. However, that does not stop Korean racegoers from betting heavily on races, a phenomenon that is often ascribed to the cultural affinity in Asian societies for numbers-based superstitions and affinities.
Finishing Order:
Watch The Race Here:
By Ritesh Jamkhedkar-Ritesh.Jamkhedkar@secretariatsworld.com