The winner of the Kentucky Oaks and the second-place Derby finisher, Epicenter, are the top horses to watch in the 147th Preakness.
BALTIMORE — There are no regrets from the camp of the Kentucky Derby champion, Rich Strike, for skipping the Preakness Stakes on Saturday and forgoing a Triple Crown bid.
Rich Strike’s trainer, Eric Reed, was with him at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., on Friday and, after watching him turn in a strong gallop, says that he is convinced that waiting for the Belmont Stakes in three weeks is the right call.
In Louisville on Saturday, Rich Strike will have a timed workout and, if all goes well, Reed plans to ship the colt to Belmont Park on May 30.
“I hate not being at the Preakness, but Rich Strike is showing us by the way he’s training that we did the right thing,” Reed said by telephone Friday. “I just kept going back to how he wouldn’t be mentally ready to run in two weeks. Now, he’s acting like a strong and alert horse.”
The time away from the limelight also has been good for Reed and Rich Strike’s owner, Rick Dawson. In the roughly two minutes that the 80-1 shot Rich Strike took to weave his way to victory in the Derby, the pair went from unknown horsemen to Everyman heroes.
They appeared on network morning shows and did countless media interviews. Reed could not wait to get back to the morning routine of training his horses on his Lexington, Ky., farm, then racing them in the afternoons at tracks in Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia.
“We’re still on cloud nine, but working hard has put our feet back on the ground, and me and my guys know we need to focus on what’s ahead,” Reed said.
The middle jewel of the Triple Crown, however, does not lack star power — the filly Secret Oath is taking on the boys after an emphatic victory in the Kentucky Oaks. She is trying to become only the seventh filly to win the Preakness and is trained by the Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas.
Secret Oath will be the 46th horse saddled by Lukas for the Preakness. No one has had more. Lukas, 86, has won here six times — his first victory at the Preakness, in 1980, was a controversial one after his colt, Codex, beat the Kentucky Derby winner Genuine Risk, a filly, in a roughly ridden race.
Lukas likes his chances.
“Being a filly, she’s real rangy and slight-built anyhow. She isn’t tucked up. I feel pretty good about her,” he said. “I actually think that she is training better these two weeks than she did the two weeks before the Oaks. Even with the trip here, it seems like she is taking a hold of it. That might be maturity and getting into the groove of what we really want to do.”
There’s 14 races at Pimlico Race Course on Saturday. Post time for the Preakness is 7:01 p.m. Eastern. Coverage begins on CNBC at 2 p.m. Eastern time and moves to NBC at 4 p.m. Coverage will also be streamed on NBCSports.com. The weather is expected to be around 90 degrees. Here’s what else you need to know:
Epicenter leads the rest of the pack. But beware of the fresh horses.
While several Derby contestants inevitably skip the Preakness in favor of the Belmont or one of the marquee summer races, the ones who do stick around — in this case Epicenter (second at the Derby), Simplification (fourth) and Happy Jack (14th) — have to contend with what horseplayers refer to as new shooters, or those who did not run in the Derby and instead focused on the Preakness, the $1.5 million crown jewel of the track known as Old Hilltop.
Last year, Rombauer followed this path to an upset victory in the Preakness. This year, Early Voting, the lightly raced second-place finisher in the Wood Memorial, is looking to do the same. His trainer, Chad Brown, made the tough call to hold him out of the Derby despite qualifying for the race. Brown and the colt’s owner, Seth Klarman, used this playbook before with the 2017 Preakness victor, Cloud Computing.
“With Seth being a Baltimore native, it’s a very important race to him, and he’d be honored to win it a second time,” Brown said. “So it’s not a disappointing goal to shoot for. We hold the race in high regard, and we want to do the right thing for the horse for the future, too, beyond the Derby and the Preakness.”
Another new shooter, Creative Minister, was not even on the Derby trail. His first race was in March, but after two impressive wins in three starts, his owners paid a $150,000 supplemental fee to make him eligible for the Preakness and the Belmont.
Rounding out the field of nine are Armagnac, who was previously trained by the embattled Bob Baffert; Fenwick, trained by Kevin McKathan, who runs a training center for young horses that produced the likes of American Pharoah and Silver Charm; and Skippylongstocking, who has four dark-colored legs, or stockings.
The party in the infield returns, in a big way.
Stories about the infield party at the Preakness are legendary: the coolers of beer, the portable-toilet races, the bikini contests, the couches brought in from the streets.
Through the years, there have been more and more restrictions to curb extra rowdy — by infield standards — behavior, but last year’s event may have been the tamest of them all. Because of the pandemic, organizers capped attendance at 10,000 people, which included the infield. The concert went on, however, and 400 pods, which sat between four and eight people each, were arranged on the grass separated by metal fencing. 2 Chainz, D-Nice and Major Lazer performed.
But the full-on party that Preakness-goers know and love — a dizzying compilation of top musical acts and bottomless mugs of beer — is back and now stretches across two days.
On Friday, a day traditionally headlined by the Black-Eyed Susan race for fillies, the inaugural Preakness Live Culinary, Art and Music Festival will be held, with performances by Lauryn Hill, Megan Thee Stallion, Brittney Spencer and others. The celebrity chefs Tom Colicchio, Marcus Samuelsson and Gail Simmons and local chefs will provide food demonstrations, and local artists will have installations in what is being called the art garden.
On Saturday, the traditional InfieldFest returns, headlined by Marshmello, the Chainsmokers and MoneyBagg Yo. Maybe there will even be sightings of the mythical centaur mascot, Kegasus.
So let the extended debauchery begin — this time, many hope, never to be interrupted again.
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May 21, 2022 at 09:23PM
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Preakness Stakes: Start Time, Schedule and How to Watch - The New York Times
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