CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, LOUISVILLE, Kentucky-

Authentic edged heavy favorite Tiz the Law to win the 146th running of the  Kentucky Derby Saturday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., a shocking win that destroyed any hopes of the Belmont Stakes winner bringing home a Triple Crown.

The annual event, traditionally the nation's biggest horse race, was streamlined and televised on NBC as fans were barred from the grounds due to the coronavirus pandemic, only roughly 1,000 people, mainly media, race horse affiliates and Church Hill Downs officials and employees, on the premises Saturday.

Ridden by jockey John Velazquez and trained by Bob Baffert, who yesterday brought in his sixth Derby win, Authentic led from start to finish, an 8-1 favorite that paid $18.80 to win.

Tiz the Law was the heavy favorite among the 16 horses in the Derby field with 3-5 odds and would have become the 14th horse to win the Triple Crown and the first since Justify had won both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes behind winning Belmont Stakes.

Third place went to Mr. Big News, a clear long shot.

The exacta paid $41 on a $2 bet, the $1 trifecta $655.90, and the $1 superfecta a mere $792.58, a far cry from the Derby payouts in 2019 that saw Country House win the race, the $2 exacta paying out $3,009.60 in 2019, the $1 trifecta, $11,475.30, and the $1 superfecta ,$51,400.10, more than double the  $1 superfecta payout in 2018.

This year's Derby came five days before the start of the NFL and as the city  faces national backlash from the March 13 Louisville Metro police killing of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor, Taylor unarmed and  Black, and shot eight times in her apartment.

Her shooting death has triggered local and countrywide protests, and riots, Taylor among a host of Blacks erroneously killed or seriously injured this year by anxious White cops, also including George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, and Jacob Blake two weeks ago in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey has bankrolled some 26 billboards throughout the city calling for the three involved White cops to be criminally charged and joins a growing number of people demanding  criminal justice reforms nationwide, some activists also calling for the defunding of police departments across the country.

Derby protests for justice for Breonna Taylor went on throughout the city Saturday as thousands protested.

The tradition is for the coveted Derby horse race to occur the first Saturday in May of each year, a tradition that caps a two-week long Derby festival and that has for the second time in history been rocked by an international crisis, this time a pandemic that has brought the world to its knees.

The Preakness Stakes, the second leg of  the Triple Crown,  originally set for May 16,  was  postponed by Maryland Gov Larry Hogan and has been tentatively rescheduled to Oct. 20.

If the Preakness goes forward in October as scheduled, it would be the first time in history that Belmont Stakes is the first leg of the Triple Crown, the Kentucky Derby, the second leg, and Preakness Stakes, the third leg.

Last year's Derby race, held on May 4, 2019 at ChurchHill Downs,  was steeped in controversy.

In spite of a muddy track from rain that came down on and off all day and sprinkled at the start of the race, long-shot Country House, with a 65-1 odds, won the 145th Kentucky to bring home the $3 million purse, a win by technicality after Maxim Security, the favorite with 4-1 odds, was disqualified for an improper lane change after crossing the finish line.

Officials said the crowd at Churchill Downs was at roughly 150,000 people in 2019, down from the year before when the attendance was 157,813, the rain a factor in 2018 too where Justify, with 5-2 odds, took first place, followed by Good Magic, which placed second, and Audible, the third place winner that year.