Coming Up Roses

The couple from Boston waited for a plane at the Louisville airport Monday, know-it-all grins on their faces.

“We bet Giacomo,” the husband said.

“Nice handicapping,” he was told.

“It had nothing to do with that,” he said. “One of our favorite restaurants back home is Giacomo’s, in the North End. That’s the reason we bet the horse.”

Jerry Moss, who with his wife Ann races Giacomo, said he had an acquaintance who handicapped the Kentucky Derby exacta on the square, and came up with the 50-1 winner and Closing Argument, the second-place finisher at 71-1, but it seems that most supporters of Giacomo had arcane reasons. The $2 exacta paid $9,814.80.

A bellman at the Executive West Hotel in Louisville knows a man who boxed the trifecta (cost: $12) based on the ages of his children. Giacomo was No. 10, Closing Argument was No. 18 and Afleet Alex, who finished third, was No. 12.

That combination paid $133,134.80, minus the 25% bite for federal taxes.

The biggest Derby payoff was the superfecta, a $1 bet on the first four finishers that was good for $846,253.50, a North American record. Don’t Get Mad, who finished fourth, went off at 29-1. The 5-2 favorite, Bellamy Road, finished seventh.

There were seven winning superfecta tickets. One was held by Brian Wien and Tommy Ritchie, who work in the printing business in New Jersey and have been friends for 25 years. They regularly meet during lunch hour in the Meadowlands parking lot, “just to kill time,” and a week ago they sat in a car and put together a $200 ticket.

Wien credits Ritchie for going for longshots, including Giacomo. Ritchie, at a party Saturday night, heard that two of the winning superfecta tickets came from New Jersey, and thought he and his partner had hit. But Wien had the tickets and Ritchie wasn’t sure.

Ritchie called Wien on Sunday morning.

“I had left the tickets on the visor of my car,” Wien said. “I drove home Saturday night with the window down, and I was lucky they didn’t blow away.”

Wien called Ritchie back 45 minutes later, to say that he had the winning ticket in hand. Wien said his son’s college expenses were two years away, and that he’d set aside most of the money for that. Ritchie said that he’d pay off his son’s car.

A Meadowlands spokeswoman said that $1.5 million was bet on the Derby, and the track paid out $2.2 million.

Moss, Giacomo’s owner, said that he seldom made big bets on his horses, and that the Derby was no exception.

“I figure that I’ve got enough of an investment, paying $50,000 just to get the horse into the race,” he said. “I did have a couple of future-book bets in Las Vegas, at odds of 40-1 and 25-1, which was less than what the horse paid [$102.60 for $2] on Derby day.”

In the paddock before the race, Moss handed Mike Smith, Giacomo’s jockey, a $200 win ticket and told him to put it in his boot.

“It was no big deal,” Moss said. “I saw somebody do it in a movie once, and just decided to do it.”

Moss, who’s in the record business, named his horse after the 9-year-old son of Sting, the recording artist.

Smith’s 10% share of Giacomo’s $1,639,600 purse was $163,960, and he collected $10,060 on the ticket Moss gave him.

On La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, there’s a custom tailor, Giacomo Trabalza, who has a regular customer named Moss. Only he’s William Moss, from Palm Springs, not Jerry Moss.

Trabalza, who says his customers include Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jack Nicholson, might have had two reasons to bet Giacomo at Churchill Downs, but he didn’t bet anything.

“I [don’t] gamble,” said Trabalza, who has been in business locally for 40 years. “Do I feel bad? A little bit. But some of my customers bet Giacomo because of my name. One of them called me from Santa Barbara to tell me he had bet.”

At Giacomo’s Ristorante in Boston, one of the waiters, Chris Iacozza, said he cashed about $1,300 in tickets on the Derby winner.

Rosemarie Talieri, the restaurant manager and the mother of the chef, collected about $2,000.

There’s no TV at Giacomo’s, so employees and some of the customers listened to the Derby on a radio in the kitchen.

“The whole restaurant went wild when that horse won,” Iacozza said.

There’s a Giacomo’s Restaurant in Petaluma, a Sonoma County town surrounded by horse farms.

“My father’s name was Giacomo,” said co-owner Gina Romeo. “He started the restaurant 18 years ago. He died 15 months ago, and one of our customers said that he bet the horse because he liked my father so much.”

Another customer who bet the Derby winner because of the Petaluma restaurant was asked by his father how much he had won.

“I’m not going to tell you,” he said. “I’m afraid you might raise my rent.”

Maybe Catholics should have bet Giacomo, as one e-mail to The Times suggested. The real name of Pope Benedict XV, the namesake of the newly elected pope and the church’s leader during World War I, was Giacomo della Chiesa.

“How about opera lovers?” Jerry Moss said. “Giacomo Puccini, you know.”

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Bandini, who ran 19th in the Kentucky Derby, will undergo surgery for an ankle chip on his right foreleg.