Preakness Stakes Field: Animal Kingdom Odds-On Favorite
by Frank Doyle of Sports Interaction - 5/18/2011
It used to be an automatic thing that if you won the Derby you marched on to Pimlico like Patton crossing the Rhine. That hasn’t been as common in recent years, as the status of the Preakness has declined in comparison to its Triple Crown sister races. And now, all of a sudden, a horse that had never run on dirt can arrest the declining popularity of horse racing. That’s what two good minutes in Kentucky on the first Saturday in May can do for you.
Looking back at the Derby and how it was that Animal Kingdom was such a outsider before the race and then won so easily, hitting the gas down the stretch to blow past Nehro and Mucho Macho Man, it seems a mistake to have held the fact the horse never ran on dirt before against it. This was hardly the horse’s fault.
Sports Interaction has learned its lesson though and Animal Kingdom will be the clear-cut favorite in the Preakness Stakes field. Not many horses win the Preakness that haven’t at least run at Churchill Downs, so even though it’s a bigger field for the Preakness than it has been in some years, the contenders seem clear.
Animal Kingdom, of course. Mucho Macho Man, third in the Derby, and Shackleford, who lead the Derby at the turn before Animal Kingdom hit warp factor nine. Midnight Interlude was disappointing in the Derby but heavy ground was never going to suit him and there isn’t much you can teach trainer Bob Baffert about horses.
But by any reasonable metric, the 2011 Preakness is Animal Kingdom’s to lose. Every time you look back on this year’s Kentucky Derby, Animal Kingdom’s trip seems easier, the win more effortless. Eleven horses have won the Derby and the Preakness since Affirmed won the last Triple Crown in 1978. Animal Kingdom will be the twelfth, and we’ll look forward eagerly to a potentially historic day at Belmont Park on June 11.
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