The Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park on Monday is the first U.S. Win and You’re In race of the year for the 2011 Breeders’ Cup. The winner gets an automatic starting berth in the BC Dirt Mile on Nov. 4 at Churchill Downs, if his connections want it, and this year even gets his $30,000 in entry fees and a $10,000 travel allowance paid by the Breeders’ Cup.

Half a century ago, to the very day and date of this year’s running Monday, the Metropolitan Handicap was presented at Aqueduct. John F. Kennedy had been president for four months. America’s Top Ten was led by Del Shannon’s “Runaway.“ Up in Boston, on the same afternoon as the Met Mile, Roger Maris hit two home runs on his way to 61.

The version of the Metropolitan run on May 30, 1961, attracted a field of seven and was led postward by Kelso, who somehow managed to be Horse of the Year as a 3-year-old in 1960 without going anywhere near one of the Triple Crown events. Their loss.

Allen Gutterman, the vice president of marketing at Santa Anita Park, fired off a note to Tom Chuckas the other day congratulating Pimlico’s president on his Preakness Day crowd and the apparent success of an infield promotion that got almost as much attention as the race itself.

I was thinking of Kent Hollingsworth, one of the most thoughtful – and thought-provoking – turf writers ever, over the weekend. I think of him often, as a contemporary and close friend, although he left us 12 years ago at the age of 70. For sheer racing entertainment, his “Archjockey of Canterbury,” published in the mid-1980s, still ranks high, and his “What’s Going on Here?” column in Blood-Horse in the 1970s and 1980s was a weekly magnet for Thoroughbred racing fans.

Three mornings after the Preakness was history, Graham Motion answered the same cell number he’s had for years after just a couple of rings. That right there, given the ferocity of recent media demands, was a telling surprise.

“Normally I wouldn’t have answered,” Motion said, speaking from his stables at Maryland‘s Fair Hill Training Center. “But I had a suspicion it was the racing office harassing us about giving up some stalls. I’ve been using the old Derby-winner excuse for a couple weeks now and I’m afraid I’m on borrowed time.”

So it goes.

BALTIMORE — Shackleford isn’t going to be remembered as a great Preakness winner, or even an above-average Preakness winner. He and the other 3-year-olds this season constitute one of the weakest Thoroughbred crops in years. Yet give the colt credit: He’s a gutsier fighter than the vast majority of horses who may have more raw ability.

When longshots such as Animal Kingdom win the Kentucky Derby, they are frequently viewed with skepticism in the Preakness Stakes — and for good reason. The congested fields and sometimes suicidal early pace at Churchill Downs can produce fluky results.

There’s more to like about Animal Kingdom’s chances in the Preakness on Saturday than there has been about a lot of other Kentucky Derby winners bidding for the second leg of the Triple Crown. He was a decisive winner of an unusually cleanly-run and traffic-free Derby; he has plenty of room for improvement with just five career starts, only one of them on a dirt track; and he hasn’t missed an oat since a race that featured no prolonged drive or struggle that might have taken something out of him.

Once again expectations are high for a Kentucky Derby winner to add a victory in the Preakness Stakes, thereby setting up the heady prospect of a possible Triple Crown champion. This time around it is Animal Kingdom’s turn in the barrel, and good luck to him on this difficult journey.

LAS VEGAS – Animal Kingdom won the Kentucky Derby on May 7 at 20-1, but it didn’t have the same feel as other recent longshots.

When Giacomo won the 2005 Run for the Roses and Mine That Bird won in 2009, there was a shocked silence in the race books where I watched those races. There was also a shortage of people lining up at the windows to cash winning tickets as those wins were seen as flukes in excess of the 50-1 odds both returned.