It is the second jewel of Thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown called the Preakness Stakes where it annually attracts a few of the best three-year-old racehorses in the country to the Pimlico Racetrack in the state of Maryland. Race horses that contend in the Preakness Stakes betting event consist of a handful that ran in the recently concluded Kentucky Derby just two weeks prior, and they also usually include several three-year-olds that skip the Derby for any number of reasons. The new contenders that get to compete in the Triple Crown are often dubbed as the “new shooters.” Unlike the huge 20-horse stampede that is the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes consists of only 14 horses. The middle jewel of the Triple Crown series is led by contenders that won the Kentucky Derby in Churchill Downs. In Triple Crown tradition that’s only unique to the Preakness, the contending horses are kept in a single barn called the Stakes Barn. The winner of the Kentucky Derby is always front and center as the horse is given the first stall in the Stakes Barn.
In determining the leading contenders for the Preakness Stakes betting event, there are a few factors that should be considered. First is Kentucky Derby winners usually run well in the Preakness Stakes. There have been four Derby winners—War Emblem in 2004, Funny Cide in 2003, Smarty Jones in 2004, and Big Brown in 2008—who went on to win the Preakness Stakes since 2000. And during the same time, there were also three “new shooters” that won the Preakness Stakes: Red Bullet in 2000, Bernardini in 2006, and the filly Rachel Alexandra in 2009. These results have been commonplace in the Preakness Stakes during the past decades.
Preakness Stakes contenders that didn’t get to participate in the Kentucky Derby tend to be either late blooming three-year-olds that probably didn’t earn enough money to make the field, or maybe the grueling 1 ¼-mile distance of the Kentucky Derby was too much for the horse’s ability to endure in a race.
Whatever the reasons are, one advantage these “new shooters” have over the others that raced in the Kentucky Derby is their fresh legs. In contemporary Thoroughbred racing, top horses are essentially never raced again after just a short two-week break. And this is besides the fact that these contenders just came off a race like the Kentucky Derby, which is, without a doubt, the toughest race a horse will ever have to go through.
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