BALTIMORE – Sal Sinatra, general manager of the Maryland Jockey Club, said at a Saturday afternoon press conference that he would like to see Preakness weekend expanded from a two-day event to a three-day weekend of racing.

"We had a good day Friday on Black-Eyed Susan Day with $18 million in handle," Sinatra said. "But we would have done better if those races were held on a weekend day."

If the Preakness festival was expanded to a third day, the Preakness could conceivably be run on Sunday, the final day of the festival, according to Sinatra.

BALTIMORE – After training in a shadow roll on Friday morning, Dortmund will wear one in the Preakness, trainer Bob Baffert said Saturday.

A shadow roll goes over a horse's nose and is used to help a horse keep his head up, and – befitting its name – helps a horse who might hesitate when he sees shadows on the racetrack.

As he wakes up this morning in Baltimore, there's one thing Bob Baffert is glad of.

"I'm just glad I'm not riding my horses," said the Hall of Fame trainer, who began his career in racing as a jockey, riding Quarter Horses but also “a few” Thoroughbreds. "I'd be a wreck. My horses were usually around 30-1, and 28 of it was me. I'd get really nervous."

Prominent owner-breeder Eugene Melnyk, who announced last summer he would disperse his Thoroughbred stock, has been hospitalized due to liver complications and is in need of an organ transplant. Melnyk, 55, also is the owner of the NHL team the Ottawa Senators.

On Thursday, the team released a statement regarding Melnyk’s health.

BALTIMORE – American Pharoah likes to move at a brisk clip, and he certainly was eager on Thursday morning here at Pimlico, tugging hard at the reins during his daily gallop in preparation for the Preakness Stakes on Saturday. But he had a formidable opponent in exercise rider Jorge Alvarez, who has been entrusted with some of the best horses on the West Coast for more than a decade and reached the pinnacle of his career two weeks ago when American Pharoah won the Kentucky Derby.

“I got a little emotional,” Alvarez recalled Thursday. “I was crying.”

BALTIMORE – These horses go out to the wise guys in the crowd, the handicappers out there turning over even the plainest gray rocks in the field, reasoning, unlikely as it seems, that buried treasure might lie beneath.

No horseman with a talented 3-year-old comes into the year thinking, “Geez, if all goes really well, this horse might take me to the Preakness!”

The disease is called Derby Fever, not Preakness Flu.

You see?

BALTIMORE – American Pharoah, the Kentucky Derby winner, on Wednesday landed the rail and was installed as the odds-on favorite for the 140th Preakness Stakes, which will be run Saturday here at Pimlico.

Jockey Angel Castillo was removed from his mounts during the middle of Tuesday’s card at Parx Racing after a search of the jockeys’ room by Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission personnel turned up an electrical device, the commission’s top official said Wednesday.

BALTIMORE – There was a palpable sense of pride mixed with frustration for trainer Simon Callaghan following the Kentucky Derby, for his colt Firing Line had again performed brilliantly, finishing second to the favored American Pharoah. Yet again, Callaghan had finished second to a Bob Baffert trainee in an important stakes race.

BALTIMORE – Pretend for a moment that Dortmund beats American Pharoah by a nose in the Preakness, and then American Pharoah goes on to dominate the Belmont Stakes.

Wouldn’t that be the equivalent of a Triple Crown suicide?