For a man who grew up three blocks from Pimlico Race Course, what could be better than winning the Preakness Stakes the day before your 60th birthday? Maybe winning it again on your 65th birthday?
Owner Seth Klarman has the chance to do just that when he and his four-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Chad Brown send out Early Voting in Saturday’s 147th Preakness Stakes.
Rob and Stacy Mitchell take pride in being hands-on owners and breeders, doing their own work with their horses at their Briland Farm in Lexington, Ky. That includes delivering the foals.
“She usually sleeps in the barn and delivers them,” Rob Mitchell said of his wife.
“I call him when the water breaks,” Stacy Mitchell said with a laugh.
Adare Manor was installed as the 5-2 morning-line favorite when the field was drawn Monday for Friday’s Grade 2, $250,000 Black-Eyed Susan Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Pimlico.
The Black-Eyed Susan shares top billing on the program with the Grade 3, $300,000 Pimlico Special. The post positions for the field of 13 3-year-old fillies entered in the Black-Eyed Susan were drawn at Citron, a waterfront restaurant in Baltimore, in an event featuring the draw for Saturday's Preakness Stakes.
Epicenter was favored in the Kentucky Derby but finished second. He'll try to go one position better, this time as an even stronger favorite, on Saturday at Pimlico in the Preakness Stakes, for which he drew post 8 in a field of nine on Monday.
Epicenter was a lukewarm 4-1 choice in the Derby, in which he was run down late by the longshot Rich Strike. That colt is passing the Preakness to await the Belmont on June 11, but eight others joined Epicenter in the entry box Monday.
Creative Minister did not get to the races until March, well after the first Triple Crown nomination deadline in January, when he could have been made eligible for just $600. That debut, in which he finished second, came only three weeks before a second Triple Crown deadline, for $6,000. As he was still a maiden, with one start to his credit, that a sprint, there seemingly was no need to make him eligible then, too.
Creative Minister was a 2 3/4-length winner of a salty allowance race at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May, some seven hours before Epicenter carried the Winchell Thoroughbreds colors to a game second in the Kentucky Derby. The two colts will converge in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday. Ironically, Creative Minister, who races for Fern Circle Stables, Back Racing, and trainer Kenny McPeek, is from a Winchell foundation family and will now seek to upset their star colt in the Preakness.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Epicenter had his final pre-race workout before heading to Baltimore as the solid Preakness favorite when going an easy half-mile in 50.40 seconds as dawn was breaking Monday morning at Churchill Downs.
Epicenter, second by three-quarters of a length behind Rich Strike as a lukewarm 4-1 favorite in the Kentucky Derby on May 7, went solo with Wilson Fabian aboard under the Churchill lights. Following overnight rain, the track clearly held a considerable amount of moisture but was fast enough to be harrowed.
Rich Strike, who gave Calumet Farm a record-extending 10th Kentucky Derby victory as a breeder, will not be in Baltimore on Saturday. But Calumet homebred Happy Jack is expected to be in the starting gate for the Preakness Stakes, looking to extend the historic operation’s record in the second jewel of the Triple Crown.
Happy Jack is by Calumet stallion Oxbow, who gave the farm its first Triple Crown victory under Brad Kelley’s ownership when he won the 2013 Preakness. Happy Jack carried the same black and gold colors to finish 14th in this year’s Kentucky Derby.
Shake Em Loose will run this weekend at Pimlico.
Only not in the Preakness.
Following a turf workout Sunday morning at Laurel Park, trainer Rodolfo Sanchez-Salomon confirmed that Shake Em Loose will instead start in Saturday's $100,000 James W. Murphy Stakes for 3-year-olds on grass. The gelding also was cross-entered in Wednesday’s $150,000 Caesars Stakes on turf at Horseshoe Indianapolis.
Armagnac, who won a first-level allowance at Santa Anita last Sunday, on Saturday became the latest horse to jump into the field for the May 21 Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, according to trainer Tim Yakteen, who said Irad Ortiz Jr. would have the mount.
The Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown, currently has 12 horses under various levels of consideration for the race, but Zandon, the third-place finisher in the Kentucky Derby, is highly unlikely to run, and Creative Minister, Rattle N Roll, and Shake Em Loose are only possible.
