With Preakness champion Cloud Computing uncertain to start in the Belmont Stakes, the thoroughbred racing world faces the strong possibility of a second straight year with three different winners of the three Triple Crown races.

Trainer Chad Brown said Cloud Computing came out of his upset victory in good order. But even in the immediate ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- The West Coast isn't used to being an afterthought in Triple Crown races but it certainly was in this year's Preakness.

Royal Mo was the best hope but he was injured during a workout the week before the race. He was retired.

Doug O'Neill wasn't planning on running anyone but then Calumet Farm, Term of Art's owner, offered up the ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- From the moment Always Dreaming and Classic Empire drew side-by-side post positions for the 142nd Preakness, the hype began for a potential match race between the two most talented 3-year-olds in this year's class.

Would it be Always Dreaming, the Kentucky Derby champion, running another brilliant race in a brilliant 2017 campaign?...Read more

BALTIMORE -- If the Preakness moves from Baltimore to Laurel, it will not be done in the dead of night to the shock and dismay of its longtime fans, Maryland Jockey Club general manager Sal Sinatra said Saturday.

"I'm just happy everyone's finally talking about it," Sinatra said to reporters at Pimlico Race Course, hours before the start of the...Read more

BALTIMORE -- If you want to know about the Preakness, especially if you want to know how to win the race, there's only one person to ask.

And there he was sitting by himself early Friday morning in a plastic chair on the shedrow of the stakes barn at Pimlico Race Course. The familiar cowboy hat was perched atop his head. Sunglasses adorned his ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- A year after two horses died under different circumstances after going down at Pimlico on Preakness Day, procedures are in place to help ensure that kind of tragedy won't be repeated during the races leading up to the 142nd running of the event -- or in the featured race itself.

A spokesman for the Maryland Jockey Club said Friday ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- Classic Empire jockey Julien Leparoux, scheduled to ride in Saturday's Preakness, allegedly was defrauded by a former financial adviser, according to a federal indictment reportedly handed down this month in Lexington, Ky.

Yahoo Sports reported Thursday that Leon Smith, a former Kentucky men's basketball team staff member, faces ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- In the months before this year's Kentucky Derby, jockey John Velazquez told his agent, Angel Cordero Jr., he might ride two more years and call an end to his Hall of Fame career.

Only one thing nagged at the man known around the thoroughbred racing world as Johnny V.

"I would feel terrible if I retired and never won a Derby for ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- Kentucky Derby champion Always Dreaming completed his preparations for the 142nd Preakness with a one-mile jog around the track Friday morning at Pimlico Race Course.

Trainer Todd Pletcher wanted to give the Preakness favorite a relaxed day after he galloped with his customary aggression on Thursday morning. It was the same routine...Read more

BALTIMORE -- Todd Pletcher knows that the world regards him as some kind of horse training android.

It doesn't matter that he fell in love with racing as a young boy in Texas, tending to horses trained by his encouraging father, J.J.

It doesn't matter that he's a family man who had his eldest son, Payton, by his side the first time he walked ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- This year's Preakness has lacked the buzz and lifeblood that sometimes can accompany the second leg of horse racing's Triple Crown.

There is no freak of nature horse.

There is no outrageous trainer.

There is no one who really believes a major upset is possible.

The civility of everyone is stifling.

It's a perfect fit for Todd ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- In a sport where all the attention is typically focused on a horse, as well as its jockey, trainer and owner, Nick Bush is getting noticed.

An exercise rider since age 13, the now 30-year-old Bush has been credited for helping Always Dreaming before his victory in the Kentucky Derby and now getting him ready for the 142nd Preakness...Read more

BALTIMORE -- Taylor Leatherman wants to ride a Triple Crown winner one day. Her best mount has been a horse that will not run one Triple Crown leg. And still her few days' experience with a would-be Preakness contender last week could be among the most significant of her young racing career.

Thanks to a family connection and an accommodating ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- If a person refuses to work, there's a good chance he or she gets fired.

If a horse refuses to work, there's a good chance it gets sent to a nice farm where it can frolic and play.

Well, maybe not quite like that, but not too far off.

This was the decision trainer Mark Casse made after Classic Empire refused to engage in a ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- Kentucky Derby champion Always Dreaming will start the Preakness side by side with his chief rival, Classic Empire, setting up a potential duel for the ages.

Neither horse's camp backed away from hyping the matchup after Always Dreaming drew the No. 4 post and Classic Empire the No. 5 for Saturday's race, set for a 6:48 p.m. start....Read more

Tom McKenna was 12 years old when his beloved grandfather, a Texas judge with a passion for horse racing, helped fuel his own love of the sport by having him ride one of the quarter horses in a race at Cowboy Park in El Paso.

"I was scared to death," McKenna, now 81, recalled this week. "I was riding with senior jockeys and they scared me more ...Read more

Mo Money's octogenarian owner is not the only latecomer to the spotlight that surrounds the 142nd Preakness Stakes.

While 81-year-old owner Tom McKenna has several decades on the horse's 34-year-old jockey, Saturday's race will certainly be the biggest of Jorge Carreno's career.

"I try not to put too much (pressure)," Carreno said Tuesday. "I ...Read more

Injured Preakness contender Royal Mo underwent successful surgery Monday on his fractured right front ankle and is recuperating at the New Bolton Center in Pennsylvania, trainer John Shirreffs said.

Dr. Dean Richardson, the same surgeon who treated Barbaro after he broke down in the 2006 Preakness, fused the joint in Royal Mo's damaged ankle.

...Read more