Seven challengers will have their eyes on favorite Justify at rain-soaked Pimlico.»
Seven will try to challenge Justify at waterlogged Pimlico
BALTIMORE» By midday Friday, the eve of the running of the 143rd Preakness Stakes, the rain and mud threatened to overtake Pimlico Race Course. Water collected in puddles and ran in streamlets in the nooks and crannies of the ancient, creaking building. Armies of bulldozers, pickup trucks and bucket brigades crisscrossed the grounds, moving the wet stuff from one place to another. The track itself, by then a brown, elliptic lake, should have been downgraded from “sloppy” to “biblical.”
A scenario much like this, plus a field of seven upset-minded rivals and a crowd that could still reach 100,000 despite a dreadful forecast, is expected to confront the champion chestnut colt known as Justify at 4:48 p.m. (MT) Saturday, when he takes aim at the second leg of the Triple Crown.
The conditions, including rain chances estimated at 90 percent, might be bad enough to make any living creature want to stay indoors, and question why anyone else would do otherwise. Justify already answered that question two weeks ago.
On May 5 at Churchill Downs, Justify outran a 20-horse field to win what was dubbed the wettest Kentucky Derby in history, holding off rival Good Magic by 2 ½ lengths and keeping his career record a perfect 4 for 4.
He will enter the No. 7 starting gate Saturday — same as he did in Kentucky — as an overwhelming favorite, his morning-line odds set at 1-2, which, if they hold, would give him the shortest odds of any favorite since Big Brown in 2008, who went off as a 1-5 favorite and cruised to a 5 ¼ -length victory.
“He’s showed us what a truly gifted horse he is,” said Bob Baffert, Justify’s trainer, who will be seeking his seventh Preakness win and 14th in a Triple Crown race. Four other times, Baffert has brought a horse to Pimlico following a win in the Derby, and all four times he won.
It seems like ages ago that people were questioning whether Justify owned enough race experience to win the Kentucky Derby. Before him, no horse in 136 years had won the race having not raced as a 2-yearold. But now, the opposite question is being asked in some circles: whether Justify has been pushed too hard. The Preakness will be his fifth career start, all of them in a span of about three months.