BALTIMORE – First Mission, the 5-2 second choice on the morning line for Saturday's $1.65 million Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, will scratch from the race due to a yet-to-be-determined issue with his left hind ankle, his connections announced Friday morning.
Skip to main content
Create Your DRF Account
New to DRF?
Everything you could possibly
need in one place
need in one place
Register
Don't have an account?
Register Here
BALTIMORE -- The Kentucky Derby winner Mage became an even stronger favorite to continue his Triple Crown bid in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes at Pimlico with the revelation Friday that First Mission would be scratched from the race due to an injury to his left hind ankle.
First Mission, winner of the Grade 3 Lexington Stakes in his last start, was the 5-2 second choice on the morning-line behind Mage, who will likely now drop below even-money come post time.
Mage won the Kentucky Derby in his fourth career start for a four-pronged partnership. The Preakness Stakes favorite races for OGMA Investments, a partnership helmed by trainer Gustavo Delgado’s son and assistant Gustavo Delgado Jr.; bloodstock agent Ramiro Restrepo; Sam Herzberg’s Sterling Racing; and Commonwealth, a sports investment app offering micro-shares in racehorses.
A Little League baseball game played in a park in Garden City, N.Y., three days before the Kentucky Derby may have foreshadowed what lay ahead for jockey Javier Castellano on the first Saturday in May.
Bottom of the sixth – the last inning – in a 0-0 game, 10-year-old Brady Castellano, Javier’s son, gets his first hit of the season. Steals second. Steals third. Next batter hits a ground ball to second and Castellano beats the throw home, sliding in safely to score the game-winning run.
A celebration ensues.
Wed, 05/17/2023 - 12:40
BALTIMORE – Prior to the Kentucky Derby, John Velazquez walked from the Churchill Downs jockeys’ room to the paddock alongside Javier Castellano. The two veteran riders and longtime friends had just watched part of the NBC broadcast where a graphic detailing Castellano’s 0-for-15 record in the Derby was shown.
“They were rubbing it in that he had not won it,” Velazquez, himself a three-time Derby winner said. “I said, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s going to come, it’s going to come.’ ”
BALTIMORE – Every spring, hard on the third Saturday in May, racing scribes fire up “new shooters” pieces, stories about horses who skipped the Kentucky Derby and ran in the Preakness Stakes.
The main story this year concerns not a new shooter but a lone soldier, Mage, the only horse among eight Preakness entrants racing in the second leg of the Triple Crown after contesting the first.
Tue, 05/16/2023 - 13:10
This is the second in a three-part series examining Secretariat’s influence on the Thoroughbred bloodstock industry as we mark the 50-year anniversary of his historic Triple Crown triumphs. This week, learn about Big Red’s record as a sire, with his breakthrough performer in the American classics being Preakness and Belmont Stakes winner Risen Star, 35 years ago.
Tue, 05/16/2023 - 11:18
Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore has added eight pick five bets to its wagering menus for the Friday and Saturday cards this week, hoping to leverage the low-takeout bets into substantial handle gains for the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes and Preakness cards.
Two of the new pick five bets will link races on the Friday card to races on the Saturday card, with both ending in the Preakness, which is scheduled as the 13th race on a 14-race card. Both also include the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes.
