BALTIMORE – Pimlico will offer guaranteed pools on two pick fives, three pick fours, and the Rainbow 6 for both Black-Eyed Susan Day on Friday and the Preakness card Saturday.
The 50-cent pick fives are especially attractive because the takeout is only 12 percent, less than half that of the pick fours. The Rainbow 6 has a 20 percent takeout.
BALTIMORE – Lani, the ninth-place finisher in the Kentucky Derby, worked five furlongs in 1:01.40 on Wednesday over the Belmont Park main track in preparation for Saturday’s $1.5 million Preakness Stakes at Pimlico.
According to Daily Racing Form clocker Mike Vesce, Lani walked once around the 1 1/2-mile oval and jogged a mile to the five-eighths pole before breaking off for his work. Vesce caught Lani in fractions of 13 seconds for his first eighth, 37.20 seconds for three furlongs, and 24.20 for his final quarter. He galloped out six furlongs in 1:14.60.
For the embattled racing industry in Maryland five years ago, there was probably nowhere to go but up.
Still, the recent resurgence in numbers posted by both the racing and breeding industries in Maryland, the site of this weekend’s Preakness Stakes, is leading to talk that the state might regain its standing on the national racing and breeding landscape, only five years after the industry was nearly given up for dead amid plummeting metrics and bitter infighting among the state’s racing factions.
Stradivari will be giving up both significant experience and months of age to his competitors when he enters the Preakness Stakes as a new shooter, but the colt, who has won his past two starts by a combined 25 3/4 lengths, sure doesn’t behave like it.
“I hope his maturity will enable him to be able to handle it and run beyond his experience,” said Tanya Gunther, who, with father John Gunther, bred the colt and co-owns him with Coolmore. “If he didn’t have as good of a mind, we might be taking a different track.”
The equine herpesvirus quarantine at Parx Racing was lifted by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture on Tuesday after all of the horses in a quarantined barn and an ontrack isolation area tested negative for the disease. The quarantine had been in place since April 1.
BALTIMORE - The announced defection of Gun Runner from Saturday’s 141st Preakness Stakes put the focus even more on the rematch between Kentucky Derby one-two finishers Nyquist and Exaggerator in the second leg of the Triple Crown.
For the handful of Thoroughbred horse-racing fans not following the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship currently underway in Russia – and I know you’re out there – it should be of more than passing interest that through preliminary-round play last Sunday, Gustav Nyquist was the leading goal scorer of the tournament, and that his Swedish national team was sitting second in the Group A standings with one game left to play, which assured them of a place among the final eight in the knockout round commencing Thursday in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Go … Sweden?
In the days leading up to the Kentucky Derby, and the days after, trainer Doug O’Neill has seemed completely at ease for a guy going through his second serious go-round on the Triple Crown trail, this time with a horse who has yet to lose.
BALTIMORE – Nyquist, the Kentucky Derby winner, spent Monday morning at Pimlico getting acquainted with the paddock and the starting gate. His trainer, Doug O’Neill, past performances in hand, will spend the next few days getting acquainted with the new competition that awaits Nyquist in Saturday’s $1.5 million Preakness Stakes.
