Kentucky Derby: Mike Repole, the maverick owner of favorite Renegade, is here to take on the establishment
The self-made billionaire outsider is looking to win his first Kentucky Derby, then plans on filing a lawsuit against a racing establishment he says is standing in the way of progress.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The buildup to the Kentucky Derby goes on long enough to convince yourself of anything, and Mike Repole has arrived with the feeling that perhaps there’s something karmic about this trip. His parents, both in their 80s, are coming this time.
He’s here as partners with Robert and Lawana Low, longtime horse folks from Missouri who are both in their 70s, because almost on a whim he made a phone call asking if they wanted to buy back 50 percent of a horse they bred. His jockey, the great Irad Ortiz, is bound to win one of these sooner or later. And drawing the No.
1 post position, which hasn’t won a Derby in 40 years? What would be more fitting than that for a loudmouth, self-made billionaire disruptor from Queens who doesn’t let up for even a second when it comes to poking at the sport’s complacent, entrenched elite? “I don’t know,” Repole said Thursday outside Todd Pletcher’s barn on the backstretch of Churchill Downs.
“Maybe there’s something meant to be about this race and this horse. ” This horse, the Kentucky Derby favorite, is named Renegade. And if the 57-year old Repole is ever meant to win one of these after 15 years of spectacular crashouts and awful luck on the first Saturday in May, why not do it with a horse more appropriately named for its one-of-a-kind owner than any of the roughly 2,000 who have previously carried his famous blue and orange silks.
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