It turned out to be one heck of a race and day at Baltimore’s historic Pimlico Race Coruse, where the sesquicentennial Run for the Black Eyed Susans, The Preakness, provided an awful lot of excitement, as the hometown SUN’s Sam Cohn gushed to his readers last night:
When jockey Umberto Rispoli rose from his stirrups, first to cross the wire in the 150th Preakness Stakes by a hair, it wasn’t just a metaphorical win for any reporter armed with a press pass. Journalism prevailed for the sanctity of the Triple Crown.
Trainer Michael McCarthy saddled the 3-year-old colt to a masterful win Saturday in 1 minute, 55.47 seconds. Journalism was the Kentucky Derby favorite, finished second, and arrived at Pimlico Race Course again projected to finish first.
Steven Asmussen’s Clever Again made a strategic jump out of the starting gate, pinning the rest of the field to his hindquarters for much of the 1 3/16-mile race. Gosger, a long shot named after journeyman outfielder Jim Gosger, surged around the bend. So much so that NBC analyst Mike Tirico said later, “You’re thinking, Gosger’s got this. It’s over.” McCarthy said he “resided myself to another fantastic effort,” mentally accepting another frustrating defeat.
Journalism’s patience paid off. Rispoli was sandwiched near the rail between Bob Baffert’s Goal Oriented and Clever Again. Goal Oriented jabbed inside. Jockeys exchanged elbows. Rispoli thought, “It’s now or never,” giving the stallion an encouraging smack on the shoulder. Journalism sprung forward, tracking down Gosger past the 16th pole to win by a half-length. Sandman was third and Goal Oriented fourth.
But for all the momentary momentum that such drama could provide for a sport that continues to struggle for relevance in these times, it couldn’t be overlooked that yet again the potential for this race to actually provide a second jewel in the sport’s Triple Crown was yet again a moot point, as MIA was the horse that upset Journalism two weeks ago at the mud puddle known as Churchill Downs, as Cohn further enlightened:
Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty did not compete in the Preakness, an act of reasonable caution from Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott. Of the 67 combined horses that ran in the Derby from 2022 to 2025, only 10 (14.9%) opted into Baltimore. There are various factors at play, most prominently guarding a horse’s health from a tight turnaround in favor of other high-money stakes.
Forget the fact that there is a $5 million carrot being dangled in front of these horses for a Triple Crown winner. These are arguably the only three times a year these days where a significant portion of America actually watches or cares who wins. With all due respect to those big money summer and fall windfalls, the audience levels and zeitgeist are a fraction of what the Derby and a Preakness that could at least have offered the oppotunity for a second win to occur provide. And I’ll bet dollars to donuts (well, at least one to one) that the audience for this year’s Preakness will be far less than what it would have been had Sovereignty and Mott given enough forethought to the state of the sport as opposed to their own satchels.
Imagine, for example, if a healthy Rory McIlroy had chosen to skip this weekend’s PGA Tournament. Or if Madison Keys said who needs springtime in Paris and willingly opted out of next week’s French Open? You’d bet the sport would be all over them like white on rice.
But the body that oversees horse racing these days is effectively a skeleton governance and NBC’s degree of commitment is relatively minimal. So we get a Preakness that was run more for pride than potential, and while the result does set up a potential showdown at the Belmont Stakes in three weeks, it’s again for little more than bragging rights relative to the purses that lie ahead later in the year.
There appears to be an unhealthy addiction to a tradition that may have mattered far more to, say, my grandfather’s generation. Horse racing commanded more column inches when they existed and more coverage on network television when it was the only game in town. And while there is a dedicated niche that still does care, they’re basically at the older and poorer end of the socioeconomic scale.
If the sport can’t mandate that the winner of the Derby is mandated to at least enter the Preakness then the sport should find a way to come closer to meeting the wishes of the modern owner. Nothing would be wrong with delaying the Preakness to the window of The Belmont, and pushing the Belmont back to, say, the Saturday after the Fourth of July or even the Fourth itself. Pimlico’s in the middle of a rebirth that would make such relocation all the more special, as Cohn’s SUN colleague Sam Janesch wrote:
Celebrating the final moments at a dilapidated venue that they helped push from a years-long redevelopment rut to a $500 million reimagining of Maryland’s premier horse racing attraction, Maryland politicians showed up Saturday for an annual mix of politicking and sporting at the 150th Preakness Stakes.
“People are excited about what the future is going to hold,” Gov. Wes Moore said inside the track at Pimlico Race Course about an hour before the main event.
“The state has made a historic investment in ensuring that we can not just have a future for Pimlico, but a prosperous future for Park Heights as well. And now we just make sure we execute,” said Moore, a Democrat.
And as for Belmont, they’re in the midst of their own reset, running this year at Saratoga while their own historic oval gets a makeover. As for that July date, there’s little of significance going on elsewhere, and in the years where a Crown is indeed a stake it would all that more consequential. Any argument that traditional TV sees depressed viewing levels on that holiday would be more than offset by the reality check that in a mobile-first world that will soon be capable of being fully measured goes out the window. And what a boon it would be for a fledgling service like FOX One–or perhaps a competitor–to have something that established as a marquee event.
Horse racing deserves better. And we KNOW Journalism deserves better.
Courage…