Our columnist is hoping the Pimlico Classic will receive its due for a change as it reaches a significant landmark
The Preakness Stakes has a problem and there’s nothing that can be done about it; put bluntly, sparing no feelings, even in its historic anniversary year, its 150th running, the Preakness isn’t the Kentucky Derby or the Belmont Stakes, its more venerated Classic brethren.
The Kentucky Derby is America’s greatest race, and only the Belmont can anoint a Triple Crown winner. So even in the most optimal scenario the function of the Preakness is to play the role of stepping stone, the due process not the dazzling prize, a necessary hurdle to clear for a potential Triple Crown hero but with the focus on the race just gone and the race still to come. At worst, if the Derby winner steers clear of Pimlico, it’s a major race without a major impact.
It might be considered a little obtuse to hold a race to account in such a fashion, especially one that has been a leading light of the US calendar – in some shape or form, as in its early incarnations it was run at different distances, at different tracks, and even as a handicap – since its inauguration in 1873 (for three years, 1891-93, the race was not run).
Yet in any coherent series, some elements naturally lack the prestige and compelling nature of others; not every G1 race is created equal. This is the position of the poor Preakness, the Triple Crown’s ‘Mr Inbetween’, simply a victim of circumstance, like someone with a birthday falling on December 28.
In this analogy, the Kentucky Derby can be compared to Christmas Day, a prolonged and intense build-up, immense levels of preparation, all anyone can think about for weeks, every tick of the countdown clock breathlessly obsessed over, everyone invested in the glorious possibilities of the situation.
Then the Belmont is New Year’s Eve, the natural end to the festivities with its inbuilt heft of closure even in those years without the freight of a Triple Crown in play. It occupies the liminal space between the winter-spring devotion to the three-year-old crop and the tilt towards the older generation in the second half of the campaign, a juncture like the final hour of the old year, a moment for celebration and reflection and anticipation.
And the Preakness is the December 28th birthday; we’re thinking of you, buddy, but we’re too hungover from Christmas to join your party and anyway we’ve got this big thing planned for New Year’s Eve. Sorry!
Warm bath of nostalgia
This year, though, the party will be underlined in red ink in everyone’s diary. The Preakness’s 150th iteration will provide plenty of opportunity to wallow luxuriously in the warm bath of nostalgia, recalling great winners, great races, great moments for what remains one of American racing’s landmark events despite its situational misfortune.
Statues at racetracks are commonplace, but probably the only one capturing a moment of mid-race drama commemorates a Preakness, the 1973 renewal when Secretariat bewitched the watching world with an explosive, game-changing burst of acceleration in the early stages of the race.
A photographer standing at the clubhouse turn – Raymond Woolfe, for the Daily Racing Form – caught this move at its genesis, the fraction of a second when Secretariat slipped the surly bonds of earth and flew, his legs thrown out before him as though he was pouncing on prey, a masterpiece of power and grace and beauty.
Renowned sculptor John Skeaping used Woolfe’s photo as the basis for a widely acclaimed statue that retains the move’s essential spirit – although ironically, almost typically, it decorates the paddock at Belmont Park rather than adorning Pimlico.
Then there was the afternoon in 1989 when Sunday Silence and Easy Goer fought the kind of duel that lives forever in the memory, two fierce rivals in a stretch drive that produced by far the most thrilling instalment of their Triple Crown sweep. It is arguably the greatest Preakness ever, a race enshrined in legend for the quality of its protagonists and the all-guns-blazing nature of their shoot-out.
For once Easy Goer took the initiative and threw down the gauntlet, whereupon Sunday Silence picked it up and threw it right back at him. The pair went eye-to-eye from the top of the stretch, their heads tilted combatively towards each other in the final sixteenth as the arm-wrestle played out, no quarter asked and none given. Sunday Silence faced down his nemesis to win by a nose.
There was an echo of that thunderous contest when Silver Charm beat Free House by a head in 1997, the winner’s irresistible force building relentlessly through the stretch before shifting the seemingly immovable Free House from the lead in a breathless final stride.
Mano-a-mano
Other mighty mano-a-mano moments have decorated the marquee day at Old Hilltop. A neck was the margin in 1978 when Affirmed turned back the hard charge of the star-crossed Alydar in their lonely, legendary battle for the Triple Crown, and it had been the same story nine years earlier when Majestic Prince gamely denied Arts And Letters during their own Triple Crown sweep.
Conversely, sometimes it has been the singular, solitary sort of performance that has brought the Pimlico faithful to their feet. Think about Smarty Jones drawing off to win by 11½ lengths in 2004, jockey Stewart Elliott conducting the crowd’s reaction with a merry wave of his whip, or Big Brown romping four years later, or the intoxicating dominance of Funny Cide, American Pharoah, Spectacular Bid.
The observant reader may have noted a pattern running through this rich tapestry; all the races highlighted have involved a Derby winner confirming his pre-eminence by adding the Preakness to his haul. It is this that makes the Pimlico race such a hostage to fortune, its most memorable days reliant on the confirmation of the result of a race staged elsewhere a scant two weeks earlier.
But it is what it is, as the kids say, whatever purported revamp to the Triple Crown in order to ‘improve its appeal’ is currently in vogue. Each leg of the series will always have a sharply defined role – to create, to continue, to crown – and of these the middle section is forever at a disadvantage when it comes to enduring significance.
This year, though, it can be different. The anniversary celebrations will rightly focus greater attention on both Pimlico and the Preakness, and with luck the Derby winner will take the stage and assert his brilliance on the way to a day of destiny at Belmont Park. If even this sounds like only qualified enthusiasm, citing the Preakness merely in terms of its connection to other races, then no offence is meant. It’s simply the reality of the calendar.
The Preakness just needs our love, our indulgence a little more than those other two sparklers in the Triple Crown. This year, of all years, we must accentuate the positives, eliminate the negatives, and give US racing’s Mr Inbetween its due as one of the standout occasions in the sport.
Happy birthday to the Preakness, and many more like it. Let May 17 not be a December 28 sort of day.
• Visit the Preakness Stakes website
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