Preakness: Mystik Dan enjoys the calm in routine gallop

BALTIMORE -- Mystik Dan took another leisurely stroll over the Pimlico main track Tuesday morning, galloping about 1 1/2 miles over a fast main track as preparations for Saturday’s $2 million Preakness continued on a quiet, overcast morning.

Mystik Dan came on the track following the 8 a.m. renovation break and jogged about seven furlongs the wrong way from the gap at the three-sixteenths pole to about the sixteenth pole. After standing a few minutes, Mystik Dan broke into an easy, controlled gallop over a dry track unlike the sealed muddy surface that greeted him Monday.

“Nothing fancy with him. He’s a pretty basic horse to train,” said Robby Albarado, the former jockey who exercises Mystik Dan for trainer Kenny McPeek. “I’ll never force him to do anything. Everything he does is within himself, on his own terms. That’s a sign of a good horse like he is -- he’s not overly aggressive, he’s not lazy. He’s the perfect horse, he does what you want him to do.”

Albarado said Mystik Dan is enjoying the relative calm of Pimlico compared to the hustle and bustle of a Churchill Downs morning.

“That’s a great thing for him,” Albarado said. “If you need him to be excited, he’ll get excited. He goes with the flow, he’s a kind horse. At Churchill, there’s so much pressure leading up to the Derby for the owners, the trainers, the jockeys. You come in here, [it’s] so laid back and relaxed, I think the horses feel that also.”

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There were three other Preakness horses who went to the track Tuesday morning. The D. Wayne Lukas pair of Just Steel and Seize the Grey had “routine gallops,” according to Lukas, but the Hall of Fame trainer and six-time Preakness winner liked what he saw from both.

“I thought they really handled it well. I know their stride, I know what they look like,” Lukas said. “That’s one of things that people really don’t know, when those horses go down the backside I got a pretty good feel if they’re handling the track or not. I am really impressed with the track -- I guess we won’t get that one -- but they were good, very good.”

Lukas was referring to the fact that Tuesday’s track was dry whereas Saturday it could be wet if the forecast for rain proves accurate.

The last Preakness horse to train Tuesday morning was Catching Freedom, the Louisiana Derby winner and fourth-place finisher in the Kentucky Derby. Having just arrived Monday, Catching Freedom, trained by Brad Cox, simply jogged one lap around the main track alongside a pony. As Catching Freedom passed the five-eighths pole, an exercise rider had been displaced from another horse, but that rider had a hold of his horse’s reins and he didn’t get close to Catching Freedom.

The remainder of the Preakness runners -- Muth, Imagination, Tuscan Gold, Uncle Heavy, and Mugatu -- were all due to arrive at various times on Tuesday.

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