What Is the Kentucky Oaks

The Kentucky Oaks is the Kentucky Derby's companion race: a Grade 1 stakes for three-year-old fillies only, run at Churchill Downs the Friday before the Derby. The 2027 Oaks is set for Friday, April 30, 2027, with the Derby following on Saturday, May 1. Over 1 1/8 miles, a sixteenth of a mile shorter than the Derby's 1 1/4, it draws its own huge crowd (more than 100,000 in recent years) and has its own nickname, the "Run for the Lilies," because the winner is draped in a garland blanket of lilies rather than the Derby's roses.

Fillies qualify the same way the colts do for the Derby, through a separate points series called the Road to the Kentucky Oaks. It runs in parallel with the Road to the Kentucky Derby, over its own set of prep races, and sets a field of up to 14 starters by points earned, with the leaders named explicitly, as Horse Racing Nation's schedule tracks race by race through the spring. A filly can instead run in the Derby itself against the colts, which has happened only a handful of times in the race's history, but the Oaks exists precisely so that the division's best do not have to.

Betting the Oaks and the Derby as a pair, on the Friday and Saturday of the same week, is a tradition at Churchill Downs in its own right, separate from either race's individual pools. Both days draw from the same prep-season form, and a filly who ran well on the Oaks' 1 1/8 miles on Friday is sometimes part of the conversation for how the following day's 1 1/4-mile Derby might play out, though the two fields do not meet. For the mechanics of betting either day, see the beginner's guide to Derby wagering, which applies to Oaks Day the same way.