Kentucky Derby 2024: Start time, horses, channel, how to watch and stream

There will be plenty of bourbon and mint juleps on hand at Churchill Downs this afternoon for the 150th Kentucky Derby, the first leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown.

Fierceness (3-2), who won the Florida Derby by 13½ lengths, is the odds-on favorite heading into the race. The 2-year-old colt was slated to break from the dreaded 17th gate, the only post position that has never produced a Derby champion, but moved up to the 16th gate after Encino was scratched. Stronghold (20-1) will now have to overcome the bad mojo of gate 17, which hasn’t produced a top five finisher since 2005.

Just two other horses — Sierra Leone (3-1) and Catching Freedom (8-1) — enter the race with odds less than 10-1. Longshot Catalytic (30-1) will break from the No. 5 post, the starting point for 10 Derby winners, the most victories since the starting gate was introduced in 1930.

Heading out of the first gate will be Dornoch (20-1), a 3-year-old colt who happens to be the full brother of Mage, last year’s Kentucky Derby winner. The horse also has a Philly connection — one of its owners is retired Phillies outfielder Jayson Werth, who purchased a 10% stake in 2022.

Werth bought stakes in five colts, and a second horse — Drip — was on track to compete in the Derby before suffering a minor injury back in March.

“Win or lose, it’s like the biggest dopamine dump,” Werth told The Inquirer. “It’s just an emotional roller coaster. You’re totally wiped out and need a nap. It’s wild. I had no idea that this is what I was getting into. I thought it would just be something fun. This is the most underrated sport there is.”

Mike Tirico, the voice of NBC’s Sunday Night Football and the host of the network’s upcoming Paris Olympics coverage, will handle hosting duties during the Kentucky Derby for the eighth straight year. The race will be called by veteran announcer Larry Collmus (voice of the viral Mywifenosevrything vs. Thewifedoesntknow race), who said the past five years — which includes Rich Strike’s unlikely win in 2022 — have been among the craziest since he began calling the Derby in 2011.

“I just remember when he came off of the wire and watching in the booth with my hands on my head in total disbelief because he’d actually won the race,” Collmus said in a conference call this week. “I remember saying to people I don’t think he should have been 80 to 1, he should have been 800 to 1.”

Here’s everything you need to know to watch or stream the 2024 Kentucky Derby:

NBC’s live coverage will begin at noon Eastern, hosted by Tirico. The race will post at 6:57 p.m., and will stream on the NBC Sports App and on Peacock.

Tirico will be joined by analysts Randy Moss and Jerry Bailey, handicappers Eddie Olczyk and Matt Bernier, and a host of reporters, including Ahmed Fareed, Britney Eurton, Donna Brothers, Kenny Rice, and Nick Luck. Rebecca Lowe, the host of NBC Sports’ Premier League coverage, returns to Derby coverage for the second straight year.

Also back will be MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki, who will track the Derby’s changing odds throughout the day.

The winner of last year’s Kentucky Derby was Mage, a 15-1 shot who entered the race with just one career won.

Mage won the Derby by a length, overtaking Two Phils during the final stretch of the race and running one-and-a-quarter miles in 2:01:57. Racing Mage was Hall of Fame jockey Javier Castellano, who finally earned a Derby win after previously going 0 for 15.

Mage’s win followed the deaths of seven horses leading up to the Derby, including two horses on the day of the race. Five more horses died in the days following the race, and an investigation cited concerns about “the frequency and cadence of their exercise and racing schedules.”

“Absent a gruesome coincidence (one that has happened repeatedly at different tracks over the years) one reasonable conclusion is that these horses were simply pushed too early, too hard and too often, something I routinely witnessed during my career on the track,” wrote Elizabeth Banicki, a former racetrack exercise rider turned reporter and columnist.

There are 20 horses racing tonight in the Kentucky Derby. Here are their odds, listed by their starting position:

» READ MORE: 2024 Kentucky Derby: Horse-by-horse preview of the Triple Crown race

The Triple Crown’s big three races — Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont — are in their traditional sequence and normal spots on the calendar after years of COVID shifts.

This year’s schedule is: