On a cool, cloudy, damp morning - totally unlike Tuesday here - Kentucky Derby winner California Chrome had a leisurely 1 1/2-mile gallop shortly before 7 a.m. on Wednesday over Pimlico’s main track.
California Chrome will not have a timed workout between the Derby and the Preakness, and assistant trainer Alan Sherman said a work wasn’t ever strongly considered. It’s not an obvious call.
Since 1933, the Preakness Stakes has been run without variation as the second jewel in the American Triple Crown. During that period, nine winners of the Kentucky Derby failed when asked to win the Preakness as well but then came right back to take the Belmont Stakes in New York, as if Maryland were nothing but a bad dream. These nine won the Parenthetical Crown, the Triple with the Hole in the Middle, roundly greeted in the Belmont Park winner’s circle with polite applause and a melancholy sigh that said, “Where were you when we needed you back on Old Hilltop?”
Julian Pimentel, a 33-year-old who got his start riding at bush tracks in his native Colombia, has the call on Kid Cruz in the Preakness, the only locally based rider with a mount in the biggest race on by far the biggest day of the Pimlico meeting.
If Wesley Ward has been typecast as a master with 2-year-old Thoroughbreds, well, so be it. One of those flashy 2-year-olds has matured into a 3-year-old worthy of running in the Triple Crown series: Pablo Del Monte, bred and owned by Ward in partnership with the powerful Coolmore group, will start Saturday in the 139th Preakness Stakes at Pimlico.
A few months after moving from Maryland to California, Willie Delgado became an exercise rider for trainer Art Sherman. He started galloping a promising 2-year-old California-bred named California Chrome.
Pimlico has come up with a $100,000 bonus system that is enticing trainers to enter more horses than they might have otherwise in the 15 stakes to be run here Friday and Saturday.
California Chrome had been standing on the Pimlico loam for only a minute or two Tuesday morning when he let out an inordinately long and loud whinny, as if to say, “What is this new place?”
Kentucky Derby winner California Chrome, escorted by four Baltimore city police officers on motorcycles, arrived at Pimlico Racecourse a little before 3:15 p.m. Monday after shipping from Churchill Downs.
New shooters: That’s the term for horses jumping into the Preakness Stakes without running in the Kentucky Derby. In recent years, the new shooters have had no shot.
