The first major horse racing event for 2025 is in the books as White Abarrio won the Pegasus World Cup by 6 ¼ lengths at Gulfstream on January 25. With Irad Ortiz Jr on board, White Abarrio finished the 1 ⅛ miles in 1:48.05. This is Ortiz’s third career win at Pegasus. Locked and Skippylongstocking rounded out the top three. Mystik Dan, who won the Kentucky Derby, finished ninth in the field of 11. That leaves him winless in four straight events dating back to his triumph at Churchill Downs. We’ve seen White Abarrio in the winner’s circle before – he won the Breeders Cup Classic in 2023. He also won the 2022 Florida Derby and the 2023 Whitney at Saratoga.
Now that we’re moving closer to spring, let’s take a look at the 2025 horse racing calendar and go over some ways you can add these events when thinking of betting horse races this year.
Betting Horse Races this Year: What Will Happen in Horse Racing in 2025?
How Can You Bet on Horse Racing in MyBookie?
First of all, let’s go over some basics of horse racing in general. The easiest way to bet on horse racing is the “win-place-show” wager. Choose a horse, and bet him to win the race, place (come in second) or show (come in third). The base bet is generally $2, and you can always go higher. You can choose that horse to finish “across the board,” meaning you have him in all three places. You’d put down $6 ($2 for three bets), and as long as your horse finishes in the top three, you win. You don’t win as much as you would for picking just one place, or for picking the “win-place” which means that your horse would either finish first or second (minimum of $4 bet on a $2 base).
If you think you know which two horses will come across the finish line in first and second, you can bet the exacta. If you bet it “straight” that means you pick the finishing order 1-2. The horses have to finish in that exact order for you to win. You can also take the “exacta box.” That means that the two horses you pick have to finish first and second, but it doesn’t matter which of the two wins. You’ll have to pay twice as much because you’re doing two combos rather than one. You can also add as many horses to your exacta box as you want. If you choose five horses, you multiply that number by the next lowest number (5×4 in this case) to get the number of possible combinations. You have to put down $2 for each combo to place that bet. The five-horse exacta box gives you room to blend in favorites and long shots and horses in between. If you get the right pair, you can actually make a lot of money off this.
One of the biggest payouts (and the most difficult bets to hit) is the trifecta, or the trifecta box. It’s like the exacta, except it involves three horses. A straight trifecta bet has you picking three horses to finish 1-2-3. You have to have the right three horses in the right order to get your payout. The box works similarly – you choose at least three horses, and as long as some or all of them finish in the top three, in any order, you collect on the payout. To figure out the combinations, take the number of horses you want to pick, and multiply it by the next two descending numbers. A five-horse trifecta box has 5 x 4 x 3 (60) combinations, so with that $2 base bet, you’ll pay $120. You can also choose what’s called a trifecta key/wheel. If you like one horse a lot, you can “key” that horse into a couple of places in the trifecta and then add as many different horses as you like to the other two places. Most commonly, people pick mid-range horses that are likely to run well into first and second.
If you really want to try your luck, then there’s the superfecta. It works like the exacta and the trifecta, but it involves the first four places. You can choose to bet it straight (four horses to finish 1-2-3-4 in the order you choose) or in a box.
Want to spread the action across several races? There are mutli-race wagers called pick threes, fours, and fives. You pick the winner of consecutive races (three, four or five) before the start of the first race. The base is generally just 50 cents, and if you have one race where you feel really strongly about one horse winning, then you can go deeper on some of the other legs.
Let’s say you put in a ticket that has two horses on one race, three horses in the next three races and five horses in the last leg. That bet (2x3x3x3x5) would cost you a minimum of $135 (multiplying those numbers together and then by 50 cents).
MyBookie is one of the top sportsbooks across all of the major professional, Olympic and amateur sports. This book is competitive with the other major sites, and so you’ll find the major horse racing events, as well as a lot of the Grade II and Grade III events on there that you might not find on some of the other books. Depending on the event, you’ll find some or all of the props that we listed above on MyBookie.
^What are the Major Horse Races? When is the Next Major Horse Race?
In addition to the Pegasus World Cup, the American Triple Crown and the Breeders’ Cup World Championships are the most significant major horse races. The Triple Crown is reserved for three-year-old horses, while the Breeders’ Cup events lead up to the Classic, which measures the best middle-distance horse in the world.
The Triple Crown consists of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes. The Kentucky Derby takes place on the first Saturday in May, and the Preakness Stakes follows just two weeks later. The Belmont Stakes is run on the first Saturday in June. Each of the three races has a different distance. The Kentucky Derby (1 ¼ miles), the Preakness (1 3/16 miles) and the Belmont Stakes (1 ½ miles) represent slightly different tests in the areas of breakout speed, endurance and finishing. Only 13 horses have ever won the Triple Crown; the most recent to do it was Justify, back in 2018.
The Breeders’ Cup takes place on October 31 and November 1 this year. The series of 14 Grade 1 races offers $31 million in prize money for 2025, culminating in the Classic.
^What are the Next Big Horse Racing Events?
You’ll find that there are races every weekend that you can bet on. Graded stakes are going to have significantly larger audiences than smaller races, though, and most of the horse racing world focuses on the Triple Crown races and the prep season leading up to them.
The focus in horse racing right now is the series of prep races leading up to the Kentucky Derby. This coming weekend features the Battaglia Memorial at Turfway Park, and the Kentucky Derby Championship Series continues this weekend as well with the Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park. Each of these prep races offers a certain number of points depending on where horses finish, and places in the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby go to horses who have earned enough points in the rankings.
After this weekend, here is the remaining schedule of Kentucky Derby prep races that award points:
March 1
Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park
Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct
San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita
March 8
Tampa Bay Derby at Tampa Bay Downs
March 15
Virginia Derby at Colonial Downs
March 22
Jeff Ruby Steaks at Turfway Park
Louisiana Derby at Fair Grounds
March 29
Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park
Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park
April 5
Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland Race Course
Santa Anita Derby at Santa Anita
Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct
April 12
Lexington Stakes at Keeneland Race Course
^What is the Biggest Horse Racing Event in the World? What is the Most Prestigious Horse Race?
In the world of horse racing within the United States, it’s hard to differentiate between the Triple Crown and the Breeders’ Cup. Of all of the races, if you’re looking for the biggest overall audience, the Kentucky Derby draws in the biggest casual audience among American races.
Internationally, one of the most storied races is the Grand National in the United Kingdom. This year it is set for April 5 at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool and is a steeplechase race that runs 4 miles and 2 ½ furlongs. There are 30 fences for horses to clear, so if you think that racing a horse around a dirt or turf track can involve chaos, then the Grand National brings in all kinds of insanity.
Some of this insanity has involved streakers rather than horses – such as when Gemma Porter and Louise Van Marle ran around stewards to get on the track and then took everything off in front of thousands of attendees. In 1993, the race was declared void as 30 of the 39 riders did not know that a false start had been called and headed off around the track. In 2001, only four horses made it to the finish line. The ground was heavy that day, and the first jumping of the Canal Turn caused problems when a loose horse got between the second pack of runners and the fence, leading all of those horses to slow down. One of the most inspirational finishes came in 1981 when Aldaniti, a fairly heavy underdog at 10/1, came to victory with jockey Bob Champion, a cancer survivor, on his back. The movie Champions with John Hurt memorialized this story.
Down under, the Melbourne Cup is one of the sport’s biggest stages. It’s a flat race that runs two miles at Flemington Racecourse and takes place on the first Saturday in November each year. Makybe Diva had a terrific finish here in 2005, winning with an easy lead and becoming the race’s first three-time winner. In 2008, Viewed won, trained by Bart Cummings, who was 80 at the time and one of the sport’s epic names in Australia. He hadn’t had a race winner in a decade, and this was his last winner as Viewed edged Bauer by a nose. In 2002, Damien Oliver rode Media Puzzle to the victory just a week after losing his brother in a riding accident. In 2011, the Melbourne Cup had its closest finish ever as Dunaden got the stewards’ nod in a photo finish against Red Cadeaux. Red Cadeaux would actually finish second two more timeless before going down to an eventually fatal injury in 2015.
If you’re into more extreme endurance horse racing, you’ll want to look at the Mongol Derby. It runs 620 miles through the Mongolian Steppe, following Genghis Khan’s horse messenger path established in 1224. The course changes each year and remains secret until just before the start. Horses go through mountain passes, valleys, hills, river crossing, and a variety of other obstacles. In this case it’s the rider you would bet on as each competitor changes horses every 25 miles at support stations. The horses are semi-wild and at times do not cooperate with the rider. The event lasts ten days – and only about half the riders finish each year.
Hopefully this article has brought you some insight about how you can bet on horse racing and some of the available options out there. MyBookie has many options to help you get started – and to bring in profits once you feel comfortable placing a variety of wagers.
The Championship Series on the Road to the #KyDerby is underway!
— Kentucky Derby (@KentuckyDerby) February 17, 2025
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