Preakness picks and analysis from Daily Racing Form handicappers Brad Free and Dan Illman.
2024 Preakness Stakes (Race 13)
Distance: 1 3/16 miles
Track: Pimlico
Post time: 7:01 p.m. Eastern
TV: NBC
Preakness field
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BALTIMORE, Md. — Saturday’s Preakness Stakes card is still set to begin at 10:30 a.m. at a drizzly Pimlico Race Course, having not been affected by a minor incident the fire department responded to at the facility late Friday night.
A dryer in the basement of the facility where linens are washed began smoking late in the evening, following the Friday card which concluded at about 6:30 p.m. According to spokesperson David Joseph, this triggered the fire alarms, a response from the local fire department, and a building evacuation.
BALTIMORE – If this training thing doesn’t work out for D. Wayne Lukas, perhaps he’ll have a future in stand-up comedy.
Lukas provided most of the comic relief at the annual Alibi Breakfast, held the Thursday of Preakness week where trainers used to give possible excuses for if their horses didn’t run well in the second jewel of the Triple Crown, but now just tell stories.
Lukas, 88, is a six-time winner of the Preakness and sends out two horses in Saturday’s 149th renewal –Just Steel and Seize the Grey.
BALTIMORE – From hunter to hunter to hunted.
Despite his narrow victory at 18-1 in the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago, Mystik Dan was likely going to play the underdog role again in Saturday’s 149th Preakness Stakes at Pimlico. That all changed Wednesday morning, when news broke that Muth, who had beaten Mystik Dan seven weeks ago in the Arkansas Derby but was not permitted to run in the Kentucky Derby, had to scratch from the Preakness due to illness.
BALTIMORE – Kenny McPeek acknowledged that in his younger days as a trainer, he would get enamored chasing the big-name jockeys such as Pat Day or Jerry Bailey to ride for him.
As time went on, McPeek’s philosophy changed. He wanted a rider that would put in the necessary time at the barn in the mornings, presumably to be better prepared for the afternoons.
BALTIMORE – Bob Baffert looked at his phone shortly after 5 a.m. Pacific time Wednesday morning and saw an incoming call from his assistant Jimmy Barnes, who was across the country at Pimlico.
“When Jimmy calls me early, that’s not a good sign,” Baffert said.
Indeed, the news was not good. Barnes called to tell Baffert that Muth, the morning-line favorite for Saturday’s $2 million Preakness Stakes, spiked a 103-degree temperature, forcing him to have to scratch from the race.
BALTIMORE -- Mystik Dan took another leisurely stroll over the Pimlico main track Tuesday morning, galloping about 1 1/2 miles over a fast main track as preparations for Saturday’s $2 million Preakness continued on a quiet, overcast morning.
Mystik Dan came on the track following the 8 a.m. renovation break and jogged about seven furlongs the wrong way from the gap at the three-sixteenths pole to about the sixteenth pole. After standing a few minutes, Mystik Dan broke into an easy, controlled gallop over a dry track unlike the sealed muddy surface that greeted him Monday.
Mon, 05/13/2024 - 14:05
BALTIMORE – D. Wayne Lukas still remembers coming through the Pimlico stable gate the morning after Codex defeated the Kentucky Derby-winning filly Genuine Risk in the 1980 Preakness and being handed a bag of mail from the security guard.
“I’m feeling pretty good, just won my first classic. He says, ‘Wow, you got a bag of mail, lot of telegrams came in overnight’ and he gives me the mailbag,” Lukas recalled Monday morning at Pimlico. “I sit down in the tack room, [former Daily Racing Form executive columnist] Joe Hirsch sits down there and I start to open them.
Catching Freedom, the Grade 2 Louisiana Derby winner who finished fourth in the Kentucky Derby on May 4, will make his next start in Saturday’s $2 million Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, trainer Brad Cox said Sunday.
Cox, who typically doesn’t run his Derby starters back in the Preakness, said Catching Freedom came out of the Derby in good shape and that he has been happy with the way the horse has galloped this week at Churchill Downs. The horse will ship to Baltimore by van following training on Monday.