BALTIMORE – Every spring, hard on the third Saturday in May, racing scribes fire up “new shooters” pieces, stories about horses who skipped the Kentucky Derby and ran in the Preakness Stakes. The main story this year concerns not a new shooter but a lone soldier, Mage, the only horse among eight Preakness entrants racing in the second leg of the Triple Crown after contesting the first. We already know a horse that didn’t run in the Derby can win the Preakness. The “new shooters” angle used to get so much play because those horses nearly never won. Now, excluding the inapplicable COVID-19 schedule of 2020, it’s happened three of the last five Preaknesses. The times, they are a-changin. There was a gap between 1983, when Deputed Testamony pulled the feat, and the next such winner, Red Bullet in 2000. Since then, Bernardini in 2006, Rachel Alexandra in 2009, Cloud Computing in 2017, Rombauer in 2021, and Early Voting in 2022 won the Preakness without running in the Derby. :: Get ready to bet the Preakness! Join DRF Bets and score a $250 Deposit Match + $10 Free Bet + Free PPs - Promo code: WINNING No secret – it’s ever rarer that horses race with only two weeks between starts, the space of time dividing the Derby and Preakness. No American horse of high caliber will ever do so again during their career. Connections of top colts no longer feel compelled to go on to Baltimore from Louisville; even the 2022 Derby winner, Rich Strike, didn’t attend. Going back to Deputed Testamony in 1983, one major trend emerges: The successful Derby-skippers nearly all missed that race by design. Deputed Testamony’s connections took a Derby pass, as did Red Bullet’s in 2000. Red Bullet finished a distant second in the Wood Memorial to subsequent Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus. Connections said thanks but no thanks to Churchill. Cloud Computing, Rombauer, Early Voting – in all three cases, the horse qualified for the Derby, the people behind the horse choosing to eschew the first Saturday in May for the third. Bernardini and Rachel Alexandra came from different angles. Bernardini as of April 28, 2006, had only won a maiden race. He captured the Withers on April 29, and the Derby came around just a week later. Who knows if he’s even on this list without Barbaro’s Preakness breakdown. Jess Jackson’s Stonestreet Stables and Harold McCormick bought Rachel Alexandra after she won the 2009 Kentucky Oaks. Why skip the Derby with a qualified runner? Two primary causes. The 20-horse Derby field (or close to it) usually leads to a rough, chaotic race. Not every horse has the constitution to meet that challenge. Sometimes, not often, people plan races accordingly, seeking to avoid the blowback that can come from miscasting a young, inexperienced horse as a Derby starter. Also, while the Preakness is only a sixteenth of a mile shorter than the Derby, the race caters more toward miler types. The Pimlico homestretch is shorter than Churchill’s, 1,152 feet compared to 1,234, which accentuates that subtracted half-furlong. A horse that won’t truly stay in the Derby just might get by in the Preakness. Before Mage earned a 105 Beyer Speed Figure in the Derby, where he benefited from a pace meltdown, he was slower than Preakness rivals First Mission and National Treasure and about as fast as Blazing Sevens and Red Route One. Mage is the horse tasked with making the two-week turnaround Saturday. It’s gotta be at least a 50-50 proposition that one of the seven shoots him down. The trainers Chad Brown has been inoculated against Derby fever. Blazing Sevens, his entrant this year, is the fourth horse since 2017 that Brown and his owners could have run in the Derby and ran in the Preakness instead. His track record with such horses is, well, pretty solid. Cloud Computing won in 2017 and Early Voting captured the 2022 Preakness. In both cases, Brown guessed right that the Derby winner wouldn’t be dominant and the Preakness would come up a far softer race than the Derby. He may have done it again this year. Let’s not forget Brown had two more Derby absentees that started in the 2021 Preakness, Crowded Trade, who finished fifth after a third in the Wood, and Risk Taking, seventh in the Wood and eighth in the Preakness. Risk Taking didn’t qualify for the Derby, but Crowded Trade did; Brown and owner Seth Klarman opted to wait for Baltimore. Blazing Sevens is not quite in the mold of Early Voting and Cloud Computing. He was a better 2-year-old than his predecessors, who both made their pre-Preakness start in the Wood; Blazing Sevens ran in the Blue Grass. Another difference: Brown had a Derby horse for 2017 and 2022. This year, Blazing Sevens was his leading hope. Steve Asmussen is the elder statesman among skipped-the-Derby, ran-in-the-Preakness horsemen. Six horses he trained, from Snuck In in 2000 to Laughing Fox in 2019, ran in the Preakness without starting in the Derby. For Asmussen, the technical distinctions between the Derby and the Preakness are too numerous and varied to be worth trying to outline. The key difference for him is a personal one. “I can win the Preakness and I haven’t been able to win the Derby,” he said with a laugh. “I stand there before the Derby wondering what’s going to go wrong.” :: DRF's Preakness Headquarters: Contenders, latest news, and more Asmussen’s two Preakness winners, Curlin and Rachel Alexandra, both were coming back on about two weeks’ rest, Curlin out of the Derby, Rachel out of the Oaks. Asmussen’s other non-Derby runners “all ran unbelievably well for who they were,” he said, correctly. Laughing Fox turned out to be fairly average but despite a troubled trip from the back of a 13-horse field was fifth in the Preakness. In 2018, Tenfold went from a fifth in the Arkansas Derby to third, beaten less than a length at 26-1, in Baltimore. Astrology, third in the Jerome, was third of 14 at odds of 15-1 in the 2011 Preakness. In 2002, Easyfromthegitgo exited a modest third in the Lexington, where he got an 88 Beyer, to finish fifth with a 104 Beyer in the Preakness. Red Route One would have run in the Derby had he not performed below form when sixth in the Arkansas Derby, leaving him short on Derby qualifying points. He returned to capture the $200,000 Bath House Row on April 22 at Oaklawn. Asmussen’s record says not to discount him. Asmussen himself says Red Route One needs ample pace assistance to get into win contention. Brad Cox is a second-time new shooter. He ran two such horses in the 2019 Preakness, third-place Owendale and fourth-place Warrior’s Charge. Owendale was coming out of a win in the Lexington Stakes at Keeneland, as is Cox’s horse this year, First Mission. To Cox, comparisons between the two end there. “Owendale was fine, but he was a Grade 3 horse on his best day, it looked like,” Cox said. “This horse has more natural speed and just overall has more talent.” First Mission breezed steadily early last summer before Cox and the colt’s owner, Godolphin, took him out of training. “He was just kind of behind, a later-developing horse you could kind of see just based off his physical. We thought we’d kick him out. Ever since we brought him back, he’s been good every single week,” Cox said. Good, but too late. First Mission didn’t race until Feb. 18. The Lexington marked his stakes debut and second start around two turns. The colt’s talent is obvious, and he’ll be the shortest-priced new shooter since Rachel Alexandra won as the 9-5 favorite. Concert Tour in 2021 finished ninth at just 7-2 coming out of the Arkansas Derby. He was trained by Bob Baffert, whose other new shooters finished fifth, eighth, and 10th. Baffert since the mid-1990s has been Mr. Kentucky Derby, winning the race six times. But in 2022 and 2023 Baffert has been missed-the-Kentucky Derby, banned from the race after 2021 winner Medina Spirit returned a post-race positive drug test. His Preakness runner Saturday, National Treasure, therefore falls into a different category than Baffert’s previous non-Derby horses. It’s impossible to imagine Baffert pulling a Brown. His best colts have one major goal – the first Saturday in May. National Treasure was meant to be a Derby horse. Had he not been transferred to trainer Tim Yakteen late this winter, maybe his entire spring campaign unfolds more favorably. The colt has to be looked at, unlike Baffert’s new shooters, as a player with ammunition. The races Recent renewals of the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct haven’t been much in terms of a Derby prep, but three horses – Red Bullet, Cloud Computing, and Early Voting – came out of Wood losses to win the Preakness. Alas, that means nothing this year since no Wood starter runs. The other recent Preakness winner coming out of a race other than the Derby, Rombauer, exited a third-place finish in the Blue Grass. Two Dale Romans-trained horses, Cherry Wine in 2016 and First Dude in 2010, placed and showed at Pimlico after Blue Grass starts. The other 14 Blue Grass-to-Preakness runners were hapless. Beyond Tenfold, the Arkansas Derby route has been fruitless, nothing on the board from eight runners. The Lexington, First Mission’s race: Third-place finishes from Hemingway’s Key (2006), Divining Rod (2015), Senior Investment (2017), and then Owendale. Divining Rod, like First Mission and Owendale, won the Lexington with a 98 Beyer. The California Derby, Chase the Chaos’s last race, in which he finished eighth, has yielded two previous Preakness runners, both in 2008, neither close. And the Tesio, the local prep, 14 new shooters since 2000. Only two finished better than seventh in the Preakness: Magic Weisner ran a very legitimate second in 2002, while Icabad Crane was a “someone-had-to-be-third” third in 2008. The verdict Three clear chances, First Mission, National Treasure, and Blazing Sevens, to beat the one Derby horse, Mage. But maybe, just maybe, the Tesio returns to relevance. Perform was its improbable winner, slaloming through traffic with a blistering final quarter-mile to win going away. A long price on a new shooter with a shot. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.