Preakness at Pimlico in the crosshairs

The endangered species list maintained by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service includes the blue whale, the red wolf, the black-footed ferret, the ivory-billed woodpecker, and the green sea turtle.

Among others endangered are the Utah prairie dog, the Florida panther, the Puerto Rican parrot, the Maryland darter, the Alabama beach mouse, the California condor, the Hawaiian goose, and the Virginia big-eared bat.

And, if we’re not careful, we also could lose the whooping crane, the rice rat, the smalltooth sawfish, the San Francisco garter snake, the Shenandoah salamander, and the Guadalupe fur seal.

Nowhere is mentioned the preservation of Preakness Stakes at its home course of Pimlico, but perhaps it should be.

The Preakness, to be run for the 143rd time Saturday, has been clinging stubbornly to its Pimlico perch as the middle jewel in the American Triple Crown for long enough now that anyone covering the event ends up dealing with the issue by reflex.

“While the excitement is building across Baltimore, there’s also concern over the race’s future and how much longer it will be held in Charm City.” – Rick Ritter, WJZ Channel 13, Baltimore.

“The owners of the 148-year-old Pimlico Race Course say they’re committed to holding the Preakness Stakes – Maryland’s largest and splashiest sporting event – at the faded Baltimore horse track for one more year.” – Jeff Barker, The Baltimore Sun.

“Much depends on an ongoing study by the Maryland Stadium Authority. The initial phase of the investigation determined that it would cost between $250 million and $320 million to renovate Pimlico.” – David Ginsburg, The Associated Press.

And so on, every year, with the only change in text any update of renovations at Laurel Race Course that moves The Stronach Group closer to pulling the Pimlico plug, if they can wrestle the race from the clutches of mother Baltimore.

If nothing else, the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame has done its symbolic part to preserve a significant piece of Preakness history with this year’s induction of Preakness, the horse, who won the featured Dinner Plate Stakes on Pimlico’s first day of racing, Oct. 25, 1870. The Preakness, named in honor of the horse, came along three years later.

Preakness, the horse, won 17 of 35 starts in the United States, most of them excruciating marathons under knee-buckling weights. At 8, he was still performing at the highest levels, and then at 9 he was sent to England for a handful of solid starts before he was sold as a stallion to the Scottish sportsman William Alexander Louis Stephen Douglas-Hamilton, better known to his fellow peers as the 12th Duke of Hamilton.

The duke apparently was a nasty piece of business, built like an oak barrel and quick with his fists. Around him, all species seemed to be endangered, but none more so than the willful Preakness, who crossed his owner one grim day and was shotgunned dead for his transgression. Legend has it that the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals sprung from the outcry over the stallion’s cruel murder.

Since the future of Pimlico and the Preakness is in the hands of politicians and developers, all that’s left for the rest of us to do is to pray for less rain and a good race. At 1 3/16 miles, with a sensible amount of starters, there is always a chance that the middle jewel could outshine the Kentucky Derby as a legitimate measure of the 3-year-old crop. Too bad more of the good ones don’t compete.

This year’s field of eight is top-heavy with Justify and Good Magic, the 1-2 finishers in the Derby. It has happened many times before, so fingers crossed that they put on a show like Majestic Prince and Arts and Letters in 1969, or Affirmed and Alydar in 1978, or Sunday Silence and Easy Goer in 1989.

The modern gold standard of the gut-wrenching Preakness rematch occurred in 1997, when the Derby 1-2-3 finishers Silver Charm, Captain Bodgit, and Free House emerged from the shaded Pimlico stretch into the sunlit finish as some mad, 12-legged beast separated by desperate head bobs. Silver Charm got the dyed daisies, but there were no real losers among them.

The best of the most recent Preakness runnings was delivered in 2007. Curlin, unbeaten but lightly raced, could not cope with the Derby’s wild ride and finished third to the more sophisticated Street Sense. But then, two weeks and 11 fewer starters later in the Preakness, it was Curlin in a dogfight with Street Sense, winning by the nod of his handsome head.

It would be too much to ask for a rerun of a race like that Saturday, even though the field boils down to the two leading lights of the 2015 U.S. foal crop, population 21,421. Justify has handled everything thrown his way in a short period of time, while Good Magic is a product of a long game intended to bring him to peak Thoroughbred during a classic spring.

With their matching blazes and caramel coats, the most striking difference is their jockeys. Mike Smith, as reliable as gravity, won his first and only Preakness in 1993. Jose Ortiz, the reigning national champion, was being carried by his mother at the time, hitting the ground that October. To see them both come down in the final strides together, their chestnuts pouring it on, could provide an unforgettable sight.