Kentucky Derby winner Mage faces small but tough field at Preakness Stakes

BALTIMORE — Mage's path to a potential Triple Crown is not an easy one.

The Kentucky Derby winner opened as the favorite for Saturday's 148th running of the Preakness Stakes, but Mage will have to top a talented field — albeit small in number — to become the first horse to take the first two Triple Crown races since Justify won them all in 2018.

The race changed when First Mission, a top contender trained by Brad Cox, was scratched Friday morning, eliminating the early second choice and leaving only seven horses to run. The result will depend on how Mage handles the two-week turnaround, what pace develops and whether Hall of Fame jockey Javier Castellano, who ended an 0-for-15 skid in the Kentucky Derby with his victory at Churchill Downs, can set up another winning trip down the stretch.

Saturday's post time at Pimlico Race Course is 7:01 p.m. The forecast is for highs in the upper 70s and includes the possibility of rain throughout the day, leading up to the start of the $1.65 million race.

Mage, purchased for $290,000 a year ago up the road from Pimlico at a sale in Timonium, is making just his fifth career start after not running as a 2-year-old but winning his debut Jan. 28 in Florida. He joined Justify as the only Kentucky Derby winners not to run as 2-year-olds since Apollo in 1882.

Mage was beaten by Forte — who was the favorite in Louisville two weeks ago before getting scratched — in his second and third career races, finishing fourth and second. That was enough to get him into the field at Churchill Downs, and winning the Derby quieted any doubts about Mage being too lightly raced to contend with the best 3-year-old thoroughbreds in the world.

"Experience at this point, I don't think it's relevant," assistant trainer Gustavo Delgado Jr. said. "Every time he races, he's getting more mature. Last race, he didn't look like an apprentice to anybody."

After winning in Kentucky at odds of 14-1 — he covered the 1 1/4-mile race in 2 minutes, 1.57 seconds — Mage was set as the 8-5 morning line favorite in the Preakness. He's the only horse back from the Derby two weeks ago.

Although trainer Gustavo Delgado Sr. has experience from his native Venezuela bringing a horse back on that short of rest, it's less common in the United States among top thoroughbreds. The Preakness is 1/16 of a mile shorter than the Derby; the final leg of the Triple Crown is the 1 1/2-mile Belmont Stakes on June 10 at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York.

"I don't think there's any trainer who will tell you he's 100% sure that (his horse is) not going to regress," Delgado said. "But other than that, all the signs — the good ones — allowed us to take this chance out here."

First Mission was scratched 36 hours before post time on the advice of veterinarians who identified a concern with the horse's left hind ankle.

"The veterinary scrutiny is very heightened on the big days," said Michael Banahan, bloodstock director for Godolphin, which owns First Mission. "Obviously they saw something that they were concerned about. ... Brad is conservative and cautious as well. When they thought that there was maybe a little issue, we said we'd just have to collaborate with them and go with their advice."

His removal from the entry list came in the aftermath of five scratches for the Derby and one horse who was scheduled to run being among the seven who died of various causes at Churchill Downs over a 10-day span.

Among the Preakness favorites, after Mage and First Mission, National Treasure was next at 4-1 odds. Blazing Sevens (6-1), Red Route One (10-1) and Perform (15-1) are the other top contenders, while the long shots are Coffeewithchris (20-1) and Chase the Chaos (50-1).

National Treasure is trained by Bob Baffert, whose career highlights include two Triple Crown winners with American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify five years ago.

Baffert is back at the Preakness for his first Triple Crown race in two years, returning from a suspension and looking for a record-breaking win. National Treasure is his first horse at the Preakness since 2021 with Medina Spirit, who won the Derby that year but failed a drug test afterward, leading to his disqualification and causing Baffert to be barred from the sport's best-known race since.

Baffert was not eligible to enter a horse in the Preakness or the Belmont Stakes last year because of a 90-day suspension in Kentucky that Maryland and New York honored. The trainer has won the second jewel of the Triple Crown a record-tying seven times; jockey John Velazquez, who will be atop National Treasure on Saturday, is 0-for-12 in the Preakness.

Of National Treasure, Baffert said: "The talent is there. We just haven't seen it in full yet."

The biggest question leading to the Preakness has been similar to the Derby: How fast will the pace be? Mage co-owner Ramiro Restrepo also assumed there'd be little pace in Kentucky to set things up well for his horse to close.

"You know what happens when you assume, right?" he said earlier this week.

Now the assumption is Coffeewithchris will provide early speed. Baffert's top horses also tend to be forwardly placed.

Mage is not a front-runner, so the faster the other horses go, the better. His training team just wants him to be relaxed the first half of the race and let Castellano navigate from there.

"It's pretty much about how he breaks and getting a good rhythm, and then he's running," Delgado said. "Hopefully he puts in the same kind of effort he did at the Derby, or even his previous race at the Florida Derby. If he does that, he should be right there."