Preakness 2025: Rodriguez to miss race due to foot issue

Rodriguez, the Grade 2 Wood Memorial winner who was scratched from the Kentucky Derby due to a foot issue, will also miss the Preakness Stakes, trainer Bob Baffert said Friday.

Rodriguez will now be pointed to the Belmont Stakes on June 7 at Saratoga.

“He’ll be perfect for the Belmont,” Baffert said. “I couldn’t prep him like I wanted to [for the Preakness]. Once he had the foot issue, you got to let those things simmer down. I didn’t have enough time.”

Baffert, the all-time leader in Preakness wins with eight, will still be represented in the race by Goal Oriented, who won an allowance race on the Kentucky Derby undercard. Goal Oriented, a son of Not This Time, won a six-furlong maiden race on April 6 at Santa Anita before capturing a first-level allowance going 1 1/16 miles in the slop on Derby Day.

“He won the other day, he galloped around there and came out of it like it was nothing,” Baffert said. “He came out of it better than he went into it.”

Not only is Goal Oriented lightly raced, he will be running back in two weeks. Baffert doesn’t see the latter as a problem.

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“No, it won’t bother him at all,” Baffert said. “Some horses are made for it. I think he has a lot of quality. We haven’t seen his best yet. I would have run him a mile first out at home, but the timing wasn’t right. This race, the other day, we put him on the lead. I don’t think he has to be on the lead. We did it because we didn’t know what to expect with the rain.

“I was going to run him in the Sir Barton and Rodriguez in the Preakness,” Baffert said. “To me, he’s going to run hard in the Sir Barton, I’d rather run him in the Preakness.”

Goal Oriented nearly made it to the races last year after working eight times between April 20 and June 23. But Baffert had to stop on him following a gate work, and Goal Oriented didn’t return to the work tab until mid-January.

“He was ready to run, we had a little deal we had to take care of, and did,” said Tom Ryan, of SF Racing, a part owner of Goal Oriented. “Being patient has paid off.”

Goal Oriented is out of the Afleet Alex mare Bizzy Caroline, a multiple Grade 3 stakes winner on turf. Afleet Alex won the 2005 Preakness and Belmont. Bizzy Caroline is a half-sister to the five-time Grade 1 turf stakes winner Lady Eli.

“Brilliance in a pedigree is rare, and there’s brilliance in this pedigree,” Ryan said.

Flavien Prat, who rode Goal Oriented in the allowance win, will ride him in the Preakness.

The defection of Rodriguez leaves the Preakness with seven definite starters, but only one, Gosger, has won a graded stakes race.

The connections of Kentucky Derby runner-up Journalism have yet to announce their decision regarding the Preakness and may wait until as late as Monday – entry day – to decide.

“He galloped this morning, seemed to be in good order, so we have the luxury of a few more days to assess him,” said Aron Wellman, head of Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, which co-owns Journalism. “We intend to take all of that time.”

Wellman said trainer Michael McCarthy planned to take the red-eye from Los Angeles to Louisville on Saturday night and watch the colt gallop on Sunday and potentially Monday. Wellman said the Preakness is an important race and he would like to run the horse in it if Journalism cooperates.

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“It’s an American Classic,” Wellman said. “There are important horses that have won this race who went on to be champions and have shaped the breed in the stallion shed. We very much would like to run but we can’t allow our personal desires to influence our proper assessment as horsemen. We’re doing everything in our ability to be as objective as we can.

“We hold the Preakness in high regard and we’d like to show up with what we think is the top of the class. We’d like to do that for the sport, we’d of course like do it for ourselves, but Journalism’s best interests are our paramount concern.”

As of Friday, the other horses intended for the Preakness were American Promise, Clever Again, Heart of Honor, Pay Billy, and River Thames.

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