BALTIMORE – As the curtain closes on this incarnation of Pimlico Race Course, it’s only fitting that trainers Bob Baffert, D. Wayne Lukas, and Steve Asmussen have horses in the field for Saturday’s 150th Preakness Stakes.
Over the last 45 runnings, starting in 1980, that trio of Hall of Fame horsemen have combined to win the race 17 times. Baffert holds the record with eight, followed by Lukas with seven. Asmussen’s two Preakness wins were among the most meaningful of his 10,874 career victories, the most of any trainer.
Asmussen called Curlin’s victory over Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense in the 2007 Preakness a “turning point in the barn’s trajectory. It was our first classic victory. He finished off the year winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic and was our first Horse of the Year.”
Two years later, Asmussen won the Preakness with the filly Rachel Alexandra, a private purchase who had just come into his barn a couple of days following her win in the Kentucky Oaks for Hal Wiggins.
“How could you compare anything to Rachel’s 2009 Preakness?” Asmussen said. “The filly changed barns and 11 days later she beat the Derby winner [Mine That Bird] in the Preakness. It was such an experience for me. . . . When we walked out of the barn with Rachel for the 2009 Preakness everybody was on her side.
“You go to the races and everybody has their favorites and who they’re rooting for, but running Rachel was different than anything I had done previously or since.”
Since Rachel Alexandra, Asmussen has run 12 horses in nine editions of the Preakness, with Epicenter’s second-place finish as the 6-5 favorite his best finish.
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Saturday, Asmussen will run Clever Again, who has won 2 of 3 starts, including the Hot Springs Stakes at Oaklawn Park in which he defeated Gaming, winner of last year’s Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity.
“He’s fast,” Asmussen said. “That does come into play. He has already in his short career beaten a Grade 1 winner and he just needs to beat several of them.”
Lukas, who has started a record 48 horses in the Preakness, brought his first horse to the race in 1980 when Codex beat Genuine Risk, the filly who two weeks earlier won the Kentucky Derby. The chart of the Preakness tells the roughly run nature of the event. “[Angel] Cordero looked back entering the stretch, angled extremely wide intimidating and lightly brushing Genuine Risk in early stretch . . . ”
An objection lodged by Jacinto Vasquez against Cordero was disallowed.
Lukas recalled coming to the barn the morning after the Preakness and being handed a sack of telegrams by a Pimlico security guard. Lukas went into his office, accompanied by Daily Racing Form columnist Joe Hirsch, and began reading them.
“They were running about eight of 10 bad,” Lukas said. ,“Most of them said ‘You mugged the filly, you did this, you did that.’ It wasn’t very positive. I thought ‘I’m going to quit reading these damn things.’ ”
Five years later, Lukas won the Preakness with Tank’s Prospect in a race that didn’t include Kentucky Derby winner Spend a Buck, who was lured to the Jersey Derby by a bonus dangled in front of him by Robert Brennan, who owned Garden State Park where the Jersey Derby was run.
Lukas won three Preaknesess in the 1990s – 1994 with Tabasco Cat, 1995 with Timber Country, and 1999 with Charismatic.
Lukas spoke this week about Tabasco Cat’s victory having the most significance because that was the horse who ran into his son Jeff earlier in the year at Santa Anita, causing Jeff severe head trauma from which he never fully recovered.
“We were trying to make something positive out of that,” Lukas said. “Jeff was still pretty much in a coma recovering during the Preakness. . . . It was significant, very much so.”
Tabasco Cat would go on to win the Belmont Stakes.
In 1995, Timber Country finished third behind the Lukas-trained Thunder Gulch in the Kentucky Derby before avenging that defeat in the Preakness.
“I thought Timber Country had all the credentials and ability to be the Triple Crown winner,” Lukas said. Thunder Gulch would come back to win the Belmont.
In 1999, Charismatic got into the Derby after winning the Lexington Stakes three weeks earlier. He followed his 31-1 upset in the Derby with a win in the Preakness at 8-1.
“He was a big, powerful horse that I think you could run every two weeks,” Lukas said.
Lukas went 14 years before winning the Preakness again with Oxbow, who after finishing sixth to Orb in the Kentucky Derby, went gate to wire under Gary Stevens at odds of 15-1.
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“We train our horses to get into their races, we very seldom have a horse that’s coming from way out of it or even in midpack,” Lukas said. “Bob Baffert trains very similar, and he’s won eight of them. If there’s a common thread between Bob and I, it’s we have horses that get into the race and take the race to the [competition]. That style of horse may suit the Preakness better than a horse that needs to have a pace up front.”
Lukas utilized that same philosophy last year when he sent Seize the Grey, under Jaime Torres, out to a front-running victory at odds of 9-1, upsetting Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan over a muddy track.
“When it got a little bit wet, I made the decision that I thought we should try to take it to them every step of the way,” Lukas said. “I told Jaime just send him to the front and see how long you could stay there. . . . Baffert looked at me and said ‘Hey, you just stole it.’ ”
Lukas may try to employ a similar strategy Saturday with American Promise, who was forwardly placed when he won the Virginia Derby but got shut off when he was trying to make a move for the lead in the Kentucky Derby.
Baffert won the 2023 Preakness with National Treasure in front-running fashion. But he’s won the race with all types of styles, beginning in 1997 when Kentucky Derby winner Silver Charm outfought Free House and Captain Bodgit to win by a head.
“I thought we got beat because I was watching the pole before the wire,” Baffert said. “I said to [owner Bob Lewis], we got beat. He said no we didn’t. Nick Zito was standing behind us, Bob asked him ‘Nick, who won?’ He said ‘You guys did.’ I saw the replay, ‘Oh yeah, we did.’ ”
It soon struck Baffert that Silver Charm would be attempting to win the Triple Crown.
“I remember calling [racing historian] Steve Haskin, ‘Could you give me the workout patterns of Secretariat, Seattle Slew, and Affirmed,’ ” Baffert continued. “He sent me what they did, and I said ‘That’s not going to work.’ You don’t realize how great a horse it takes until finally I came with American Pharoah and Justify.”
Real Quiet came back the following year to win the Preakness after winning the Derby. Baffert said he felt extremely confident Real Quiet was going to win the Preakness.
In between Real Quiet and American Pharoah (2015), Baffert won the Preakness with Point Given (2001), War Emblem (2002), and Lookin At Lucky (2010).
Baffert called Point Given’s defeat in the Kentucky Derby “a head scratcher. . . . For him to win [the Preakness] I felt really good about him. It felt really good to win. When he won the Belmont I was sick about it watching him come down the stretch because I thought Point Given was Triple Crown” material.
Baffert got his Triple Crown when American Pharoah swept all three races in 2015 and Justify did the same in 2018. American Pharoah, after a narrow win in the Derby, won the Preakness by seven lengths in gate-to-wire fashion.
American Pharoah “barely won the Derby,” Baffert said. “What happened? I have this super horse and he barely won. I found out he wanted to be on the lead.”
In 2018, Justify’s most difficult race during his undefeated Triple Crown campaign came in the Preakness. Or so it appeared. Much of the race was run in the fog, and ultimately Justify held off Bravazo, a Lukas trainee, by three-quarters of a length.
Baffert watched that race on a small television in the Pimlico paddock, a gaggle of reporters surrounding him.
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“I remember saying I hope that big white face is in front when they come out of the fog, and he was,” Baffert said. “And then when he barely won, we were excited about it, but I remember asking Mike Smith ‘That’s not a Triple Crown-caliber horse is it? Smith said ‘You told me not to win by a lot, I shut him down. I didn’t see Lukas’s horse coming, but he wasn’t going to get by.’ ”
National Treasure’s victory over Blazing Sevens, trained by Chad Brown, was by an even smaller margin, the two hooking up entering the far turn and dueling the length of the stretch with National Treasure prevailing by a head.
In midstretch, Baffert said “I’d already given up. Chad Brown, he’s got me. Then [National Treasure] comes back. That was so exciting.”
That was Baffert’s record-setting eighth Preakness win. He’ll try for his ninth Saturday with Goal Oriented, a horse who is just 2 for 2.
“To come here and to win it, it’s very special,” Baffert said. “The classics are very important, very emotional to win. It’s a great legacy for the horse and the trainer and everybody.”
Whether it’s Baffert, Lukas, Asmussen or someone else, this Preakness winner will be remembered as the last one at this historic venue before it is torn down and rebuilt.
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