Grade 3 winner Winslow Homer has been retired with a suspensory injury, owner Rick Porter of Fox Hill Farm announced Saturday.
"Unfortunately, we had to retire Winslow Homer," Porter wrote on the farm's Facebook page. "He had another suspensory injury and I didn’t want to go on with him since it looks like we can’t get past this suspensory problem. He was one of my favorites but the time had come to retire him. We have several people that are interested in him as a stallion."
Champion sprinter Benny the Bull was represented by his first winner May 11, when Joe Pike won his career debut at Camarero Race Track in Puerto Rico.
The colt, out of the winning Dove Hunt mare Allofeverything, won by 3 1/2 lengths and covered two furlongs in :22.47.
Kentucky Derby winner Orb arrived at Pimlico Race Course with his sights set on joining an exclusive fraternity of Triple Crown winners raised at historic Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky.
Regardless of the Preakness outcome, Claiborne, in partnership with some of its most prominent and loyal clients, already has put its stamp on this Triple Crown season, marking yet another successful chapter in the operation’s storied history.
A field of nine, headed by Kentucky Derby winner Orb, will contest the Preakness Stakes, second leg of the Triple Crown, Saturday at Pimlico Race Course.
Below is a closer look at the individual pedigrees and backgrounds of this year's entrants, in post position order.
Mike Pons was about 100 yards past the wire when it happened.
The co-owner and manager of Country Life Farm was seated with his youngest son David and his older brother Andrew on the first turn at a rain-soaked Churchill Downs as he watched Orb charge down the middle of the track to win the 139th Kentucky Derby.
While the Kentucky Derby was the longest distance test for many of the horses coming back for the Preakness Stakes, the mile and three-sixteenths at Pimlico will be the second-longest challenge they have faced up to this point.
When analyzing contenders who have little or no on-track form at longer distances to base an opinion on, examining pedigrees can go a long way in helping separate horses from the pack.
DRF Breeding staff writer Joe Nevills analyzes the Preakness Stakes field, in post position order, in the form of Haiku; a Japanese poem of 17 syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five.
Orb
The Derby winner
Replete with class on the track
Target’s on his back
Goldencents
Gets up off the mat
After tossing the towel
What’s left in the tank?
Justenuffheart, dam of champion Dreaming of Anna and two other graded stakes winners, recently died due to complications after foaling a Galileo colt, Mt. Brilliant Farm of Lexington, Ky., announced on Friday. The Broad Brush mare was 18.
A stakes winner herself, Justenuffheart produced four winners from six starters. Her third foal was Dreaming of Anna, a millionaire Rahy filly who won 10 of 17 starts, including the 2006 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies to lock up the divisional Eclipse Award that season.
