No love for the Preakness?

[Merlinsky]

Originally Posted by Danzig

miner's reserve may go in the preakness. typically the top horses point to the top race, the preakness generally gets the top from the derby, and then a few that get hot but not soon enough to make churchill-horses from the withers, the federico tesio, derby trial, etc. maybe the lexington winner?

Eightyfiveinafifty might try to join the infield crowd at Pimlico. Does that count?

Seriously though the biggest case of a stable ditching the Derby and aiming to kick things off with the Preakness (as far as I know) was Man o' War. The Derby was a big race but not quite the phenomenon it is today, and Riddle wasn't about to go to Kentucky of all ungodly places to run 1 1/4 in early May. He thought that was for the birds. Sufficed to say, today I'm sure he'd be more easily persuaded. Didn't he get grumpy about sending War Admiral to begin with? It's such a shame since MOW probably would've been the easiest TC winner in history. It's not like there was a Sham in that Derby.