Preakness Time

The Preakness is the second leg of the Triple Crown, a marathon race in which a horse enters three different stakes races as a three year old.  Any horse that can win all three races in succession is called the Triple Crown Winner.  This has not happened since the 70's in which three horses in a single decade accomplished the feat. The first was Secretariat, the second was Affirmed, and the last was Seattle Slew.  I remember that decade well, as I was back in the eastern half of the nation then.  I watched Secretariat win when in the state of Michigan, and I witnessed the Affirmed and Seattle Slew victories when I lived in the state of Florida. Interesting that both are peninsula states.

Since then it has been the trainers who have designed the way to either win or lose at these stake races.   They would hold their horses out from a race so that they could enter a later race with a fresh horse.  This was very obvious in a race with Winning Colors,  a filly that a trainer, Woody Stephens, determined to beat no matter what.  So since he was so successful at that trick, other trainers learned from him that it is pretty easy to beat a horse who has raced successfully in the first two legs to be pretty much unable to  with stand the competition from a horse that is destined for only the third leg.  Thus, we have had no winners  of the Triple Crown since the 70's.  Wonder if Orb will win the first two to do as so many have done, fade out in the Belmont.

There are a few newcomers to the Preakness while most of the runners in the Kentucky Derby have declined to race in the Preakness but there are enough who like Orb are also rans in the Derby who will be there to challenge him to a good and fair race.  The horse, Departing, who won the Illinois Derby, is considered by most as the only challenger to Orb but that remains to be seen.  Since it was an off track, and mud being driven into a horse's face probably cost it momentum, it will take a dry track to see if Orb is truly the wonder horse that all his backers believe him to be.

If Orb does win, and goes on to face the same group of horses three weeks later in New York for the Belmont stakes, and he does not have a serious contender in a fresh horse seeking to win he could become the first Triple Crown winner since Seattle Slew won in the late 70's.  One wonders whether the drought is near an end, and of course, bets have been taken on this along the way.  But the most important part of the equation in this particular race lies with the owners and the trainer.  For some reason, the media elements have capitalized on the Phipps family and the trainer Shug.  Some blogger even suggested that it was a form of Old School Racing that won the Derby.  He seemed to challenge the likes of D.Wayne Lucas and Todd Pletcher who are made out to be glory seeking trainers.

Shug is a trainer who only puts horses in who he believes will win.  If every trainer did that, the Derby would probably be cut down to five horses in the field, and one of those five trainers would be right. I do not find fault with D. Wayne Lucas, Todd Pletcher,  or Doug O'Neill for finding horses to enter who can be in the money and are not necessarily winners all.  Horse racing is not just for trainers who must always win, win, win.  California racing is certainly proof of that.  Horseracing has fallen into total disarray in that the fields are so small.  It is not fun to bet on California races any longer.

So what will happen this Saturday at the Preakness? Will Orb win again?  Will Shug finally be ready to claim a Triple Crown winner? The Phipps family? Or will another trainer and horse steal the show?  That is why it is a horse race?  Your bet is as good as mine.