Handle on the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore dropped 10 percent compared with the same race last year, a decline that was at least partially due to a late thunderstorm that washed out handicappers’ confidence in their already low expectations for payouts in the race.
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BALTIMORE – For Firing Line, Saturday’s Preakness Stakes was over before it truly began. Two jumps into the race, the Kentucky Derby runner-up stumbled over the sloppy Pimlico track, and he never truly recovered.
“Pretty much chance over,” said a downtrodden Simon Callaghan, the trainer of Firing Line, who ultimately was eased across the wire by Gary Stevens in seventh place in the eight-horse field. “He stumbled badly at the second jump, went down on his head, and he never really got hold of the track. He got behind; nothing was kind of happening for him today.”
BALTIMORE – The rains came, and American Pharoah reigned.
The Kentucky Derby winner brushed aside seven rivals and deteriorating weather conditions at Pimlico to score a resounding victory Saturday in the 140th Preakness Stakes, which will send him on to the June 6 Belmont Stakes in New York with a chance to become the first Triple Crown winner since 1978.
BALTIMORE – It was the perfect storm – or in the case of the 140th Preakness on Saturday at Pimlico, the most imperfect of storms.
Thunderstorms had been widely predicted by weather forecasters to precede the scheduled 6:18 p.m. Eastern post time for the second jewel of the Triple Crown. On cue, black clouds began gathering ominously with less than an hour to post, and the unmistakable smell of impending rain was in the air.
Watch DRF Live! for live all-day video coverage from Pimlico of the Preakness Day card here.
This is a very tough sequence. I considered narrowing opinions to a radical extent, trying something like a $20 play, but there are enough horses I actually like in the five races that I’ll take a swing with less of a lottery-style ticket. Only narrowing comes in race 11, The Very One, where I’ve got no backups behind three As, and in the Preakness, where – if this play is miraculously still alive – AMERICAN PHAROAH or FIRING LINE will have to get home.
BALTIMORE – After training in a shadow roll on Friday morning, Dortmund will wear one in the Preakness, trainer Bob Baffert said Saturday.
A shadow roll goes over a horse's nose and is used to help a horse keep his head up, and – befitting its name – helps a horse who might hesitate when he sees shadows on the racetrack.
As he wakes up this morning in Baltimore, there's one thing Bob Baffert is glad of.
"I'm just glad I'm not riding my horses," said the Hall of Fame trainer, who began his career in racing as a jockey, riding Quarter Horses but also “a few” Thoroughbreds. "I'd be a wreck. My horses were usually around 30-1, and 28 of it was me. I'd get really nervous."
One of the advantages (or disadvantages) of being a racing reporter is you can tell when a trainer is really, really confident in what they’re telling you – and that was the case this week when I called Joe Orseno to ask him about HAPPY MY WAY (4) in the Grade 3 Maryland Sprint Handicap (race 5) on Saturday at Pimlico.