One week after the Derby, a Belmont Stakes prep in New York that will lose it’s morning-line favorite to the Preakness. First leg of the Triple Crown in the books. Triple Crown season still in full swing. Peter Pan Tuscan Gold, who probably would have won, will be scratched from this in favor of the Preakness (which he also might win). Lonesome Boy also is coming out (more on him shortly), still leaving a pretty tasty field of six pending further scratches. The morning line has The Wine Steward a clear second choice not accounting for the scratches, but I wonder how much shorter he’ll be than Antiquarian. Antiquarian has not done much wrong and has been working with the apparently mighty Mindframe and not having his lunch stolen and eaten. I think you give him a clear excuse for the Louisiana Derby: That was a real pre-start gate breakthrough, the colt attempting to begin racing. It’s tough to recover from that. I just go back to the horse in front of him in his debut and the one right behind in his maiden win: Neither has amounted to all that much. :: DRF's Preakness Headquarters: Contenders, latest news, and more The Wine Steward got a much better trip than Locked in the Breeders’ Futurity but still did well to run within a half-length of him, and many were raving about the pre-Derby training of the horse who beat The Wine Steward in the Lexington, Encino. I doubt this horse really wants 1 1/8 miles, and his price is going to be too short. No idea what to make of Deterministic at this point. Is he a one-turn horse? Did he love the Gotham slop? Maybe the best idea is just tossing the Wood, since he didn’t run at all. Speaking of the Wood, I wanted to like the run Protective made more than I did after rewatching the race a couple times. I liked Native Land in his Keeneland allowance win a lot more than I like him here. We’re down to one horse – Unique Insight, the pick and play. You can see through the running lines trainer Chad Brown trying to figure this colt out. He must not have shown a whole lot before his debut since he went off at 11-1 – and ran like a 30-1 shot. They tried turf second time out to no avail, then went back to dirt, fitting Unique Insight with blinkers. Again, nothing doing. Blinkers off, a switch to two-turn racing, and what do we have here? The maiden win over a soft field was just all right, but it also was a bridge to his strong entry-level allowance score over this nine-furlong trip April 12. Those were much better horses he comfortably beat, setting a solid pace over a surface that wasn’t favoring speed that day. Think he makes the lead in the Peter Pan, and at the expected price, I’ll guess he never gives it up. Mamzelle Cloudwalker on April 20 at Keeneland showed what can happen when you take a short price on a closer in a full field of turf sprinters. She likely was the best horse in that allowance race, but Cloudwalker got seriously stymied from the three-sixteenths pole past the furlong pole, leaving her no chance to win. I don’t believe Cloudwalker will go as high as her 8-1 morning line in the Mamzelle, but she’ll be several times the price she offered at Keeneland, and with better luck, she can win this. Her debut victory looked good enough, but she appeared to show a new dimension last month, rocketing into high gear when she finally got clear. :: Get ready for the Preakness with DRF past performances, picks, and betting strategies! Long Branch If Native Land runs well in the Peter Pan, maybe you upgrade Heartened, the horse he narrowly beat at Keeneland, in the Long Branch. I probably wouldn’t. Heartened already is four races into his 2024 campaign, and the improvement he showed last time might be all he has in him. He’s the favorite on the line, and I don’t like the chances of second-choice Sea Streak staying this distance. If Lonesome Boy is willing to rate just a couple lengths off a fast pace, he can win. I see nothing fraudulent about his last two starts, and something similar might suffice in the Long Branch. He buried his pace rival in the Wood and stayed on gamely to the sixteenth pole – and that’s as far as he has to run this time. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.