BALTIMORE – Orb beat 18 rivals when he won the Kentucky Derby on May 4, and he did it so convincingly that only five of those runners are trying again in the 138th Preakness Stakes on Saturday here at Pimlico, along with three newcomers to the Triple Crown trail. Eight challengers, it seems, is enough.

BALTIMORE – Will Horton will pretty much be running his entire stable at Pimlico Race Course on Saturday, when Will Take Charge starts in the Grade 1, $1 million Preakness Stakes and Laurie’s Rocket goes in the Grade 3, $150,000 Maryland Sprint Handicap. Together, the horses he owns have won a combined 5 of 11 starts this year, for earnings of $636,185. Among their wins have been three stakes races, including the Grade 2, $600,000 Rebel.

BALTIMORE – Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas will have plenty to keep him busy Saturday at Pimlico even before he saddles three horses in the 138th Preakness Stakes.

Lukas has five horses running in three undercard stakes, topped by the uncoupled entry of Optimizer and Skyring in the Grade 2, $300,000 Dixie Stakes.

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The Dixie, run at 1 1/8 miles, drew a bulky 13-horse field that lacks a standout.

BOSSIER CITY, La. – There is a hint of nostalgia in the air at Louisiana Downs. The track’s 40th season has produced a homecoming of sorts for veteran jockey Bobby Walker Jr. and agent Wendy Smith, two major players locally in the 1980s.

Walker was a perennial top-10 rider, while Smith represented several other top-shelf jockeys during the period. While both admittedly are in the twilight of their careers – they have spent more than 90 years between them at the racetrack – a common goal has brought the two together for one last fling.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Suggestive Boy, the top turf miler in Southern California over the winter, will resume training this week after being given a break for a splint bone injury, trainer Ron McAnally said.

Earlier this year, Suggestive Boy won the Grade 2 Arcadia Mile and Grade 1 Frank Kilroe Mile on turf at Santa Anita, but was held out of the Maker’s 46 Mile at Keeneland in April after the splint bone injury was detected.

“He’s about ready to start back,” McAnally said Wednesday. “We X-rayed it, and they said it was all healed. It was a little crack. It was very minor.”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Jack Frost has a name of great renown, but not from his deeds as a horse trainer.

“My dad was one of 13 kids, all but two of them boys,” said Frost, who lived in and around Huntsville, Ala., for the first half of his 62-plus years. “Everyone always got tagged with some kind of nickname because of our last name. He figured I might as well be the one to make it stick.”

AUBURN, Wash. – Emerald Downs will begin its Friday card 30 minutes early this week, at 6:15 p.m. Pacific, to accommodate an eight-race program that includes the first two Quarter Horse races of the meeting. A field of six will sprint 350 yards in race 1, followed by a mixed group of Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds going 870 yards in race 2.

It will be like old times Friday when Gary Contessa sends out nine horses on the 10-race program at Belmont Park.

“I haven’t had a day of entries like this in a long time,” said Contessa, New York’s leading trainer from 2006-09, including a record 159 victories in 2007.

Contessa reported that Rydilluc is over a minor foot bruise and on track for the inaugural running of the $500,000 Penn Mile for 3-year-olds June 1 at Penn National.

BALTIMORE – The talent Departing has shown in winning 4 of 5 career starts figures to make him the shortest price among the three newcomers joining the Triple Crown fray Saturday in the Grade  1, $1 million Preakness Stakes at Pimlico. ­Govenor Charlie and Titletown Five are the only other members of the projected field of nine who did not run in the Kentucky Derby.

INGLEWOOD, Calif. – For all that Rousing Sermon has accomplished he is light on career wins.

In 16 starts, Rousing Sermon has one stakes win (the 2011 California Cup Juvenile), finished second or third in seven stakes and earned $534,248. He won for the third time in his career in an optional claimer at Santa Anita on April 14 and will be favored to win another optional claimer at Betfair Hollywood Park on Friday.

If he succeeds, the 4-year-old colt may run in a major stakes this summer, possibly the $500,000 Hollywood Gold Cup on July 6.