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The Kentucky Derby is widely considered The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports, with most winners of the mile and a quarter race falling a few seconds behind that 2:00 pace. Sports fans will get much more than two minutes with this year’s Kentucky Derby field though, as the Kentucky Derby and Twin Spires are hosting daily live streams of contender training sessions leading up to Saturday’s race.

This is the first year that Churchill Downs Racetrack has provided a live stream of contender’s workouts and the live video includes graphics, to identify each horse, as well as Churchill Downs’ own Joe Kristufek on commentary.

The global stream is presented by TwinSpires.com and will be available on multiple platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, with the Twitter stream also featuring a timeline of Kentucky Derby-related tweets alongside the live video. Training session live streams will begin at 8:30 AM EST each day and run daily through Thursday, May 4th, when the morning training sessions break for racetrack maintenance.  

The horse racing community hopes that these live streams will help boost interest in the Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown but what most casual fans are waiting for is the release of official release of betting odds. These figures will be determined by Wednesday’s post position draw, which will also be live streamed.

Starting position will certainly have an impact on the odds, as there are advantages and disadvantages to certain stalls but until then, the focus during the Kentucky Derby live streams should be on the pre-post betting favorites, Classic Empire and Always Dreaming.

Classic Empire was the best 2-year-old of 2016 and his sire, was also the father of 2015 Triple Crown winner, American Pharaoh. Always Dreaming has won three times already in 2017 is trained and ridden by Kentucky Derby winners. Both come in at 4/1, with my “I Picked That Horse Because It Has a Cool Name” favorite, Irish War Cry, currently sitting at 13/2.

For updates and information leading to the 143rd running of the Kentucky Derby, follow the Kentucky Derby on Twitter and tune into their daily live streams.