The 2025 Triple Crown season is in full bloom as thoroughbred horse racing commands the attention of sports fans whose favor does not normally take four-legged athletes into account.
Thus, there’s never a better time to pick up a copy of The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told – A True Tale of Three Gamblers, The Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel, a nonfiction title written in the third person by first-time author Mark Paul.
Published in 2020, the book has been around for a while, but has enjoyed favorable market success in sales and appears to have staying power, given its niche market genre. It helps to be a horse racing fan for complete leisure-time reading enjoyment, better yet one who takes pleasure in the experience of gambling on the ponies.
This is as much a tale of the development of the 1988 Kentucky Derby winner Winning Colors as it is the trio of friends who made a small fortune betting on her under the most precarious of circumstances. It’s also a showcase of Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, who at age 89 is still active, and Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens, whose portrayal of legendary rider George “The Iceman” Woolf in the acclaimed motion picture Seabiscuit earned him the admiration of a new audience.
And then there’s the owner of Winning Colors, Eugene Klein, who forged an alliance with Lukas after selling his NBA franchise Seattle SuperSonics and NFL franchise San Diego Chargers to invest millions of dollars in a thoroughbred racehorse empire the likes of which had never been seen before.
Three buddies whose love for the track and its unique atmosphere, the challenge of putting mental acumen to work picking the winners of horse races, and the sheer enjoyment of being together sharing their experiences are at center stage in this fast read and engaging tale.
A couple of subplots with romance and drama help to keep the reader’s interest, but the focal point is the love affair the trio has with Winning Colors that began even before her first race.
A fellow named Miami, the character through whom the author tells the story, is good friends with a horse player named Dino, who becomes obsessed with an unraced filly named Winning Colors to the point he’s convinced she’ll win the 1988 Kentucky Derby even before she’s made her first start. The prospects of a filly defeating colts in the Kentucky Derby is considered absurd by the so-called experts in the field of race handicapping, even though the feat had been accomplished twice in history, first by Regret in 1915 and second by Genuine Risk in 1980.
Despite the tall statistical odds against them, the three friends place a wager on her in the futures book at Agua Caliente in Tijuana to win the Derby months before the race. It was a huge gamble: They weren’t even sure that she’d be entered, let alone win.
As it turned out, making the bet was easy, but collecting their winnings was a challenge, given that the owners of Agua Caliente had ties to a Mexican drug cartel. The plot will keep you glued to the pages until the very end.
Lovers of thoroughbred horse racing will delight in the behind-the-scenes backstretch anecdotes about the sport and the development of Winning Colors into an equine star and glimpses into the lives of a champion trainer and jockey, as well as an owner who was heavily invested in what became his life’s passion.
It is made ever more impactful by the fact that octogenarian Lukas is still active as a trainer. He saddled a colt named American Promise, who finished up the track in the 2025 Kentucky Derby. It was Lukas’s 51st Derby starter in the 151-year history of the fabled “Run for the Roses.” He has won the race with four of them.
The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told – A True Tale of Three Gamblers, The Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel is published by Authority Publishing. For more information visit the author’s website at www.markpaulauthor.com.
