Sovereignty wins 2025 Kentucky Derby for Bill Mott at Churchill Downs
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2025 Kentucky Derby coverage
Click below to view more coverage from the Lexington Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com at the 151st Kentucky Derby on May 3 at Churchill Downs in Louisville.
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Sovereignty won the 151st edition of the Grade 1, $5 million Kentucky Derby on Saturday night in Louisville, besting a field of 19 horses beneath the Twin Spires on a sloppy track at Churchill Downs.
Trained by Bill Mott and ridden by Junior Alvarado, Sovereignty went off at 7-1 odds.
Post-time favorite Journalism, who went off at 3-1 odds, finished in second place, after being out-dueled in the stretch run by Sovereignty. This means that post-time favorites have now failed to win each of the last seven runnings of the Kentucky Derby. Baeza — who moved into the race as an also-eligible horse — ran third at 13-1 odds. Final Gambit (17-1 odds) was fourth.
Sovereignty won the 2025 Kentucky Derby in 2:02.32.
The Churchill Downs main track was sloppy Saturday following significant rainfall in recent days. Friday’s Kentucky Oaks — won by Good Cheer — was also run on a sloppy track.
Sovereignty departed from post position No. 16 in the Derby, becoming the fifth horse from that starting spot to win the Derby. He’s the first winner from that post since Animal Kingdom in 2011.
Mott, a 71-year-old from South Dakota, now has his second Kentucky Derby win. He won in 2019 with Country House (also on a sloppy track), but that win came following the controversial postrace disqualification of Maximum Security.
The 38-year-old Alvarado, who is from Venezuela, now has his first Derby win in his sixth attempt.
Sovereignty is a Godolphin homebred. It’s the first Derby win for that ownership group. Godolphin also scored a homebred win in Friday’s Kentucky Oaks with Good Cheer.
Sovereignty’s sire is Into Mischief and his mare is Crowned, by Bernardini. Sovereignty is now 3-2-0 in six career starts.
The 2025 Derby was won by a true closer in Sovereignty, but the race had an influx of early pace courtesy of Bob Baffert’s Citizen Bull, who ran the opening quarter-mile in 22.81 seconds and the opening half-mile in 46.23 seconds. It was 1:10.78 for the first three-fourths of a mile.
Neoequos, American Promise and Owen Almighty were also part of this early pace-setting effort.
Journalism made a big outside move during the turn for home to move up the field and take the lead from Owen Almighty. But the problem for the race favorite was that Sovereignty was right alongside him. Sovereignty had followed Journalism in moving up through the field on the outside.
The two horses were essentially side-by-side entering the stretch run, and Sovereignty beat Journalism straight up in a head-to-head battle in the final furlong.
Attendance for the 2025 Kentucky Derby was 147,406.
Sovereignty paid $17.96 to win, $7.50 to place and $5.58 to show.
Second-place Journalism paid $4.94 and $3.70.
Third-place Baeza paid $8.38.
Sovereignty wins 2025 Kentucky Derby on a sloppy Churchill Downs track
Saturday’s running of the Kentucky Derby was the first to take place on an off track since 2019, when Country House won the race (following the disqualification of Maximum Security) on a sloppy track.
Mott conditioned both Country House, the 2019 winner, and Sovereignty, this year’s champion.
In fact, Saturday’s race was just the 10th running of the Derby (out of 151 of them) to take place on a sloppy track. Three of these have come in the last eight editions of the race.
The complete list of Kentucky Derby winners on a sloppy track is: Flying Ebony (1925), Citation (1948), Go for Gin (1994), Smarty Jones (2004), Mine That Bird (2009), Super Saver (2010), Orb (2013), Justify (2018) and Country House (2019), in addition to Sovereignty.
Additionally, seven runnings of the Derby have been contested on a muddy track. Those winners were: Riley (1890), Worth (1912), Exterminator (1918), Clyde Van Dusen (1929), Hoop Jr. (1945), Tim Tam (1958) and Sunday Silence (1989).
In 2017, Always Dreaming won the Derby over a track that was officially listed as “wet fast (sealed).”
Undefeated Good Cheer wins the 2025 Kentucky Oaks
On Friday, a star 3-year-old filly staked her claim with an impressive win in the Grade 1, $1.5 million Kentucky Oaks.
Good Cheer — trained by Louisville native Brad Cox and ridden by Luis Saez — covered 1 1/8 miles on Churchill’s sloppy main track to win the 151st running of the Oaks.
A Godolphin homebred, Good Cheer topped a field of 13 3-year-old fillies in a winning time of 1:50.15. She won by 2 1/4 lengths.
After being set as the overwhelming 6-5 morning-line favorite, Good Cheer also left the Oaks starting gate at those odds. She’s now a perfect 7-for-7 in her racing career.
Good Cheer delivered Cox his third win in the Kentucky Oaks. He also won the race with Monomoy Girl in 2018 and with Shedaresthedevil in 2020. Saez, the jockey, now has two wins in the Oaks. He was aboard winner Secret Oath in 2022.
2024 Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan also raced Saturday
Curious about what 2024 Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan is up to?
He’s still racing, but he’s yet to find the winner’s circle since his triumph in last year’s Run for the Roses.
After winning last year’s Kentucky Derby, Mystik Dan has now failed to win in each of his last five starts, with his latest defeat coming in the Lake Ouachita Stakes at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas on Saturday night.
The race, a $200,000, 1 1/16-mile contest for horses aged 4 and older, was a tightly contested showdown between Mystik Dan and odds-on favorite Saudi Crown; Saudi Crown edged the 2024 Derby winner at the last moment, leaving Mystik Dan still in search of his first post-Derby win.
Mystik Dan posted a second-place effort in last year’s Preakness Stakes, an eighth-place showing in last year’s Belmont Stakes, a sixth-place run in the Malibu Stakes in December and a ninth-place finish in the Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes in January, prior to Saturday’s race.
This story was originally published May 3, 2025 at 7:17 PM.
