While every contender in the 2011 Kentucky Derby field hails from SEC country*, with a handful bred in Florida and all the rest repping Kentucky, Ocala's own Mucho Macho Man might be the best option as far as local rooting interests go, by which I mean the horse to bet on if you're into betting on horses based on dumb stuff besides how fast they are at circling. Of course you are!
Not only is Mucho Macho Man some kind of zombie**, no Audio Adrenaline, his person friend hails from Suwanee, Georgia. The team's colors even reflect the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets' gold and white, as revealed in a fine Steve Hummer profile.
* Technically Louisville is Big East country, but no country would ever go out of its way to call itself Big East country.
** Which also boosts his ATL cred. You recall the horse attacked by downtown walkers in The Walking Dead? He did not himself become a walker, but a runner [thud sound].
The 2011 Kentucky Derby post time is at 6:24 p.m. (ET) on Saturday, May 7th and SB Nation has everything you need to prepare for it - current Derby odds, contender profiles, field updates and more. You can find all of that and more at our 2011 Kentucky Derby StoryStream. Also, our horse racing blog And Down The Stretch They Come has two must-read resources for Derby fans: A Beginner's Guide To Following Horse Racing and a glossary of horse racing terms.