ELMONT, N.Y. – The small framed picture that hangs on the back wall of trainer Mark Hennig’s Belmont Park office shows Personal Hope at the quarter pole of the 1993 Kentucky Derby with a clear lead and seemingly in hand under Gary Stevens. “How many horses you see turning for home at the quarter pole under wraps like that and not win?” Hennig said. Personal Hope still had the lead in midstretch, but Jerry Bailey and Sea Hero were about to go by him. Two others did as well in the last sixteenth of a mile, and Personal Hope finished fourth, beaten 2 3/4 lengths. Just 28 years old at the time and less than a year out on his own after working for D. Wayne Lukas, Hennig thought there would be regular trips down the Triple Crown trail. “You’re younger and you kind of take it for granted and you kind of think it’s going to keep happening,” Hennig, now 54, said in a recent interview. Like the Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino, who made it the Super Bowl in his second season and never made it back, Hennig has not been back to the Kentucky Derby. Personal Hope ran in the Preakness, bled and bowed a tendon, and never raced again. In 2004, Hennig ran Eddington in both the Preakness and Belmont Stakes, but that horse was not mentally ready for those races, Hennig said. :: Preakness one-stop shop: Get PPs, picks, handicapping guides, and more In his earlier days, Hennig trained for some big outfits, Team Valor and Ned Evans to name two. With Evans, Hennig trained a trio of multiple graded stakes-winning fillies – Raging Fever, Gold Mover, and Summer Colony. As Evans’s health declined, he wanted a more aggressive trainer and ultimately moved his horses. “He came at me when he was sick. He thought I needed to take more chances in the game and take a little edge,” Hennig said. “He referred to me as a halo trainer. I tried to explain to him then that the cream will rise to the top. I tried to keep the faith that someday we’d make our way back around to be competitive in these races.” It has taken 15 years, but Hennig is back in the Triple Crown picture with Bourbon War, who will run in Saturday’s $1.5 million Preakness Stakes at Pimlico. Bourbon War did not earn enough qualifying points to make the Kentucky Derby field. Though with several late defections the week of the race, Bourbon War could have gotten into the race, he stayed back in New York. When Maximum Security crossed the wire first and Code of Honor third in the Derby, Hennig had mixed emotions about not being there. Bourbon War had spent the winter chasing those horses in races like the Fountain of Youth – second to Code of Honor – and Florida Derby – fourth behind Maximum Security and three-quarters of a length behind Code of Honor for third. “Yes and no,” Hennig said when asked if he regretted not being in the Derby. “With the finish, I certainly feel like we could have been there with those horses if he’d have handled the slop, that would have been a question.” Few would question Hennig’s ability to train a horse at the top level. Of his 1,396 career victories, 220 have come in stakes, 105 of those being graded. In the summer of 2015, Hennig started training for the Courtlandt Farm of Don and Donna Adam. They had success with horses like Strike Power, Strike Charmer, and My Miss Lilly, the latter making it to last year’s Kentucky Oaks. Bourbon War is owned in partnership by Bourbon Lane Stable and Lake Star Stable. A son of Tapit out of the Grade 1-winning mare My Conquestadory, the colt was originally purchased for $410,000 as a yearling at the Keeneland November breeding sale. He was twice entered in sales to be sold, but once failed to meet his reserve and once was withdrawn late because he was rumored to have a chip, which was a misdiagnosis. “We wanted a New York trainer with a Saratoga presence, good record in general who goes to Gulfstream and is a solid, upstanding citizen,” Mike McMahon, founder and co-president of Bourbon Lane Stable said. “Mark ticks all those boxes. He’s a great friend, great communicator, honest to a fault. He’s a really good guy. Mark is definitely more than capable of getting a horse to the classic level.” Bourbon War won his debut on Nov. 14 at Aqueduct. When the Dec. 1 Remsen Stakes lost some of its major players, Hennig entered Bourbon War right back. The colt didn’t have the cleanest of trips and finished fourth. Following a brief freshening, Bourbon War won an allowance at Gulfstream in January before running a solid second to Code of Honor in the Fountain of Youth. Maximum Security ran away from the competition in the Florida Derby, and the slow pace of the race compromised Bourbon War, who ended up fourth. Hennig didn’t feel that Bourbon War was focused enough turning for home in those last two races, so he is equipping Bourbon War with blinkers Saturday. “I don’t know that it puts him that much closer to the pace as much as it puts us that much more in the game,” Hennig said. As far as the Triple Crown series is concerned, Hennig is glad to be back in the game.