Wager Earner

Most of the so-called expert handicappers dismissed War Emblem as a legitimate threat to win the Kentucky Derby.

Not Jon Roberts.

A carpenter who also helps out with a friend’s electrical business, Roberts, 32, had a life-changing experience a week ago, thanks to his faith in trainer Bob Baffert and jockey Victor Espinoza.

On a $20 investment at the Winners off-track betting facility in Brunswick, Maine, Roberts collected, before taxes, $203,320. According to Scott Reese, the manager at Winners, it was the most a single bettor had ever won in the state.

“He was pretty excited,” Mary Hennessy, Reese’s assistant, said of Roberts. “He’s a really nice guy. When he comes in, he’s pretty quiet and keeps to himself. It’s great.”

Besides betting $2 to win, place and show on both War Emblem, who was 20-1, and 23-1 runner-up Proud Citizen, for which he got back $117.40, Roberts had a $2 exacta and a $2 trifecta.

Boxing the pair in the exacta, at a total cost of $4, he received $1,300.80 and using those two plus third-place finisher Perfect Drift in the trifecta earned Roberts $18,373.20.

Most of his windfall, however, resulted from his nailing the superfecta, not once, but twice. He played a $2 ticket with War Emblem on top, Proud Citizen in the two hole, Perfect Drift third and Medaglia d’Oro fourth. His return was $183,529.

No more than a casual horse player for the last five or six years and whose biggest previous score was a $1,700 superfecta, Roberts placed his Derby bets after watching some of ESPN’s extensive prerace coverage.

“I pretty much went with War Emblem because of Baffert,” Roberts said Friday, while waiting to pick up a new all-terrain vehicle he had purchased with some of his winnings.

“I’ve watched him for years and he wins a lot of races and, having seen some of the races from California, I think Espinoza’s a really good rider. I liked Proud Citizen pretty much because of [trainer Wayne] Lukas, and the other two horses were just a total shot in the dark. I really didn’t know much about any of the other horses.”

After doing some yardwork at the home of his girlfriend Janice Dugal, Roberts sat down to watch the 128th Derby. Like the rest of the world, he saw War Emblem, Proud Citizen and Perfect Drift run 1-2-3 for virtually the entire 11/4 miles, the first time there had been such a parade in the race since Regret won in 1915. He wasn’t immediately certain, though, about which of the 15 other 3-year-olds had finished fourth.

“Both Janice and I were pretty excited,” he said. “I thought I had won maybe $5,000 on the trifecta, and when I saw there was a five-digit number next to the trifecta, I was running around the house yelling and screaming.

“But I didn’t know about the superfecta. I really couldn’t tell who was fourth.”

He found out soon enough. While he and Dugal were driving back to Winners to collect his winnings on the bets across the board, the exacta and the trifecta, Roberts’ friend and boss at Dwelley Electric, Alan Dwelley, called his cell phone and gave him the good news about Medaglia d’Oro.

“I was pretty much in shock and have been for most of the week,” said Roberts, who lives in Yarmouth, about 20 miles north of Portland. “It was just luck. This is the first day everything has pretty much sunk in and things are starting to feel normal again. I’m going to pay off my bills and then I’m going to do a lot of investing. It was just complete luck.”

Like other horse racing fans, Roberts will be watching the Preakness a week from today. He may also get involved financially.

“I’m going to stick with War Emblem and I definitely hope that horse keeps winning and gets the Triple Crown,” he said. “I don’t ever expect anything like this to happen again, but I’ll probably bet him across the board and I might try the exacta, trifecta and superfecta.”