American Pharoah can run. And, after this race, we also know he can swim. Braving conditions even more treacherous than what he encountered in his 3-year-old debut in the Rebel Stakes, American Pharoah rolled to a seven-length victory, and now moves on to the Belmont Stakes with a chance to become the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years.
American Pharoah is off to New York to try for the Triple Crown – but first, a return to Louisville.
Under the dark skies over Pimlico, American Pharoah shone brightly in the Preakness. He not only displayed his usual high speed, but he was the only one of the key contenders who handled with aplomb the wind, the driving rain, the mu,d and even a lightning flash right at post time.
Handle on the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore dropped 10 percent compared with the same race last year, a decline that was at least partially due to a late thunderstorm that washed out handicappers’ confidence in their already low expectations for payouts in the race.
For Firing Line, Saturday’s Preakness Stakes was over before it truly began. Two jumps into the race, the Kentucky Derby runner-up stumbled over the sloppy Pimlico track, and he never truly recovered.
The rains came, and American Pharoah reigned.
It was the perfect storm – or in the case of the 140th Preakness on Saturday at Pimlico, the most imperfect of storms.
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This is a very tough sequence. I considered narrowing opinions to a radical extent, trying something like a $20 play, but there are enough horses I actually like in the five races that I’ll take a swing with less of a lottery-style ticket. Only narrowing comes in race 11, The Very One, where I’ve got no backups behind three As, and in the Preakness, where – if this play is miraculously still alive – AMERICAN PHAROAH or FIRING LINE will have to get home.
After training in a shadow roll on Friday morning, Dortmund will wear one in the Preakness, trainer Bob Baffert said Saturday.
