There are several factors that make the Kentucky Derby unlike any other race. For starters, the access into how horses are doing prior to the first Saturday in May is unparalleled. If not for Derby Week, for instance, who would have known that Scat Daddy was training in bar shoes?

Yet while the vision of 20 horses breaking from the gate manages to send chills year after year, the aerial “blimp shot” is truly astounding, and something trip handicappers wish could be enabled on a daily basis.

Only with this angle from high above Churchill Downs could it truly be viewed how sensational a trip eventual winner Street Sense received from Calvin Borel.

Breaking from the 7-hole, Borel deftly guided Street Sense to the fence by the time the field reached the finish line for the first time, and was never farther than a single path from the rail the remainder of the race.

From the Outback blimp “Bloomin’ Onion 1″, you could easily see Street Sense advancing up the inside down the backstretch — insight not available without this view — and looking like a winner even from this early stage.

Much the way Borel guided Street Sense up the rail in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (and the Tampa Bay Derby), it was the trip that paved the way for Street Sense to race to immortality as a Kentucky Derby winner.