My esteemed fellow handicappers, I need some help with deciding how to bet Saturday’s 141st Preakness, the second jewel of thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown that will be run at ancient Pimlico race course in Baltimore.
The unbeaten Nyquist, impressive winner of the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago at Louisville’s Churchill Downs, is a deserving favorite. But the morning line has him at 3-to-5, and that’s just too short a price for me.
So what’s a poor bettor to do?
Well, one possibility is to mortgage everything you own and put it all on Nyquist to show. The return will be small, but it’ll probably be better than the interest you get on a savings account at your local bank. Unless, of course, Nyquist has a really bad day and runs out of the money. Then bridge-jumping becomes a distinct possibility.
But I can’t go that route. For one thing, I can’t come up with enough cash to make the bet worthwhile. Second, tough as it is to argue against a horse that’s 8-for-8 for his career, I’m still not sure that Nyquist is the second coming of Seattle Slew – the only unbeaten horse to win the Triple Crown – or, for that matter, even American Pharoah, who last year became America’s first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.
There’s a good chance of rain at Pimlico on Saturday, and though Nyquist handled an “off” track well in winning the Florida Derby, Exaggerator loved the same kind of track in rolling to victory in the Santa Anita Derby.
In Louisville, Exaggerator got a perfect trip in the Derby and was running at Nyquist at the end. It remains to be seen if he can improve enough to reverse the outcome in the Preakness, or whether he’s destined to be another Sham, who futilely chased Secretariat through his Triple Crown tour de force in 1973.
The only other Derby horse game enough – or crazy enough – to challenge Nyquist in the Preakness is Lani, the challenger from Japan, by way of a victory of the UAE Derby in Dubai, whose unorthodox training regimen has drawn as much curiosity in Baltimore as it did in Louisville.
Lani runs only when he feels like it. He didn’t feel like it in the Derby and was left at the post. Although he rallied to finish ninth, that was mainly a case of passing tired horses who stayed too close to the hot early pace. It was certainly not the sort of effort that would seem to merit another chance in the Preakness.
A lot of players will be taking a hard look at Collected, who won the Lexington Stakes at Keeneland and passed on a slim chance to make the Derby field so he could point for the Preakness. The reason is that he’s trained by Bob Baffert, who has won the Preakness a record-tying seven times since Silver Charm won it for him in 1997.
Cherry Wine? Not in this blue-collar, shot-and-a-beer town. If he were to win, however, it would be a wonderful story for the media, considering that his trainer, Dale Romans, was in a serious car accident after watching his Brody’s Cause run seventh in the Derby.
Frankly, the horse that intrigues me the most is the lightly race Stradavari. As a 2-year-old, he lost his debut last November, but has won his two starts this year by a total of 26 ½ lengths. He’s running in stakes company for the first time, a daunting challenge for trainer Todd Pletcher and jockey John Velasquez.
It’s more than likely that Stradavari will run like a cheap fiddle instead of a priceless violin. But what if it turns out that he, not Nyquist, is the star of this class? Stranger things have happened in racing, where the status of horses can change from week to week because they’re still maturing.
I’m either going to bet Nyquist over four or five horses, including Stradavari, or I’m going to bet only exacta and trifecta boxes. To me, that seems about the only way that a reasonable person with a modest bankroll can win any money in the Preakness.
So I think I’m going to box Nyquist, Exaggerator, Stradavari, and either Cherry Wine or Collected. Some of the others will be on or near the lead in the early going. But when the field turns for home and heads down the long Pimlico stretch, I look for Nyquist to take the lead and one or more of my other three picks to be taking dead aim on him.
That’s the best I can do, my fellow handicappers. Any advice or other ideas will be greatly appreciated.
Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby
