When the connections of Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty decided just days after the colt’s win in the first leg of the Triple Crown to skip the Preakness Stakes, racing’s chattering classes leapt to the ramparts to resurrect calls for the Triple Crown schedule to be altered.
Unlike in previous years, however, there was no such spirited debate occurring in the executive offices of the companies that have stakes in the races.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Todd Pletcher has nothing against the Preakness.
“I don’t hate the Preakness,” Pletcher said. “I love the Belmont.”
Pletcher has started a record 65 horses in the Kentucky Derby and a modern-day record 37 horses in the Belmont Stakes. Saturday, when he sends out River Thames in the 150th Preakness Stakes, it will be just his 11th starter in the middle jewel of the Triple Crown. Pletcher is 0 for 10 in eight runnings of the Preakness, with Impeachment’s third-place finish in 2000 – Pletcher’s first Preakness starter – his best result.
BALTIMORE – As the curtain closes on this incarnation of Pimlico Race Course, it’s only fitting that trainers Bob Baffert, D. Wayne Lukas, and Steve Asmussen have horses in the field for Saturday’s 150th Preakness Stakes.
Over the last 45 runnings, starting in 1980, that trio of Hall of Fame horsemen have combined to win the race 17 times. Baffert holds the record with eight, followed by Lukas with seven. Asmussen’s two Preakness wins were among the most meaningful of his 10,874 career victories, the most of any trainer.
Michael Gorham has been running horses at Pimlico for more than 30 years. Saturday, he gets his first opportunity to run a horse in the race at Pimlico when he saddles Pay Billy in the $2 million Preakness Stakes.
While Pay Billy figures to be the longest shot on the board in the nine-horse field, he has won four of his last five starts, including a gritty 1 1/2-length victory in the Federico Tesio Stakes at Laurel Park, a Win and You’re In event for the Preakness.
Trainer Michael McCarthy got a good look at Journalism on Sunday at Churchill Downs and saw all he needed to see to green-light the Kentucky Derby runner-up for a start in Saturday’s $2 million Preakness Stakes at Pimlico.
“Just wanted to make sure things were as we had left them before I left,” McCarthy, who maintains a string in Southern California, said Monday. “Training with good energy, appetite, all those things you want to see; signs telling you you have a happy horse and we certainly feel like we have that.”
ARCADIA, Calif. - The multiple stakes winner Grand Slam Smile joined trainer Sean McCarthy’s stable earlier this year at Santa Anita and is nearing her first start since late November.
Owned and bred by Larry and Marianne Williams, Grand Slam Smile has won 6 of 11 starts and earned $526,400. She was previously trained by Steve Specht, who retired late last year.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Jockey William Antongeorgi was briefly hospitalized on Saturday evening after being unseated shortly after the start of the day’s ninth race at Santa Anita.
Antongeorgi was aboard 26-1 Perfect Smile in a six-furlong maiden race when the first-time starter ducked toward a gap where the first turn joins the backstretch. Perfect Smile started from the inside post in a field of eight.
ARCADIA, Calif. - Kopion, who has emerged as the nation’s leading female sprinter in recent months, is under consideration for the Grade 2 Great Lady M. Stakes at Los Alamitos on July 5.
Trainer Richard Mandella said on Sunday that Kopion emerged from a win in the Grade 1, $1 million Derby City Distaff at seven furlongs at Churchill Downs on May 3 in “very good” condition.
Journalism is alive and well and going to the Preakness.
Aron Wellman, of Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, which co-owns Journalism, said late Sunday afternoon that the Kentucky Derby runner-up will run in Saturday’s $2 million Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, where he will likely be an odds-on favorite in what is shaping up to be a nine-horse field.
Wellman announced the decision in a posting on X, formerly Twitter.
BALTIMORE – Post positions drawn Sunday for Friday’s Grade 2, $300,000 Black-Eyed Susan Stakes at Pimlico give no runner in the field of nine 3-year-old fillies a distinct advantage.
The Black-Eyed Susan will be one of three graded stakes on the 14-race Friday card at Pimlico, along with the Grade 3 Miss Preakness for 3-year-old fillies at six furlongs and the Grade 3 Pimlico Special for 3-year-olds and up at 1 3/16 miles.
