Austin Woman Turns $18 Horse Race Bet Into $1.2M Win

SOUTH AUSTIN, TX — An Austin woman turned an $18 bet into $1.2 million in winnings at the horse race track outside San Antonio, and she has Justify — the horse that won the Kentucky Derby — to thank for her windfall.

Margaret Reid is a regular at the Retama Park race track that has been a fixture in South Texas for generations, according to reports. In her latest outing with friends on Saturday, she won a "pick five," which is when one predicts the winner of five races in a row. In a stroke of luck, the fifth race in Reid's bet happened to be the Kentucky Derby. The long shots she picked in between that ended up being winners increased the value of her bet even further, she later told reporters.

"It was an amazing feeling, yes, that you won a really big, like a really big ticket," Reid told CBS. "A mini-lotto if you will."

But this wasn't just a case of dumb luck as is the Texas lottery, where people pin their hopes on randomly drawn numbers painted on balls inside a chamber. She told reporters she understands the inner workings of the bet she placed and picked the winning horses accordingly. While the strategy doesn't always work out, she noted, it did on Saturday.

And how.

Reid told reporters she plans to use some of the money for a vacation. She also plans to set aside some of her winnings for her young daughter's future college education, she added.

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