Baltimore

5th-AQU, $85k, Msw, 2yo, 1m, 2:10p.m. ET After heavy winds cancelled the card he was originally going to debut on last week, OTTINHO (Quality Road) looks to make it second-try lucky for his unveiling here. Most notably out of Quiet Giant (Giant's Causeway), who is famous for her son, Hall of Famer Gun Runner (by Candy Ride {Arg}), the bay is a Three Chimneys homebred who goes postward for the barn of trainer Chad Brown. Drawn in the middle of the field, he enters this race with a healthy worktab...

5th-AQU, $85K, Msw, 2yo, 1m, 2:10 p.m. ET. OTTINHO (Quality Road) is out of Quiet Giant (Giant's Causeway), who is famously known for producing one of the top sires of this age in Gun Runner (by Candy Ride {Arg}). The first-time starter and Three Chimneys homebred--sent to trainer Chad Brown--counts among his extended female family GISW Funtastic (More Than Ready) and MGSW Lull (War Front). A stablemate of Ottinho, Up Yonder (Curlin) heads to the post for owner Jeff Drown. The $500,000 Keeneland September grad is out of a winning...

Bryson Butterfly, who was an up-and-coming teenage apprentice jockey in Maryland when he was arrested two years ago on first-degree murder charges for his part in a staged robbery that went wrong and killed a 17-year-old high-school student, was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday by a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge. Butterfly, now 20, started riding horses as a toddler while growing up on a Native American Indian reservation in rural Washington. He had graduated from Pacific Northwest bush-track horsebacking to being a $2-million winning apprentice based primarily...

Steve Luhn's 'Winning Colors' will grace the Preakness 150 merchandise after the piece was selected as the winner of the 'Art of Racing' competition celebrating the Preakness Stakes. Luhn beat out over 250 submissions to earn the honor. "My representation of horse racing captures the dynamic energy and excitement of the sport," said Luhn. "Bold, vibrant colors and striking visual elements convey the intensity of the race, with the horse mid-gallop, jockey leaning forward, creating a sense of speed and competition." As the winner of the fourth-annual competition, Luhn received...

The GI Kentucky Derby hero, Mystik Dan (Goldencents), will be pointed towards the May 18 running of the 149th GI Preakness Stakes at Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course, trainer Kenny McPeek said Saturday morning via a Churchill Downs press release. "All systems go," McPeek said. "He'll ship out in the morning." The champ had a routine 1 1/2-mile gallop at Churchill Downs under retired jockey Robby Albarado, who will be part of the Derby winner's travel team to Baltimore. After an endoscopic exam and bloodwork was analyzed just to ensure everything...

Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas confirmed both Seize the Grey (Arrogate) and Just Steel (Justify) would go on to Baltimore with an eye on the GI Preakness S. after runs this past Saturday at Churchill Downs, the Maryland Jockey Club announced Monday. Seize the Grey won the GII Pat Day Mile S. while Just Steel wound up 17th in the GI Kentucky Derby. "We'll bring both of ours," Lukas confirmed to the Maryland Jockey Club media Monday. "We will be there Monday." Meanwhile, Derby hero Mystik Dan (Goldencents),...

Preak Weeks initiative in partnership with Heidi Klotzman of HeidnSeek Entertainment returns for its second season, 1/ST and The Maryland Jockey Club announced Tuesday. Preak Weeks shines a spotlight on Baltimore-based businesses in the lead up to the Preakness, the second jewel in the US Triple Crown. Each day from Apr. 26 through May 17, one of 22 participating businesses will give away to a set of customers the "Ultimate Preakness Experience," a four-pack of tickets to Preakness 149 that includes access to this year's Preakness Live festivities. In addition,...

There are a lot of opinions about the Triple Crown. Most of them center on the Preakness and the spacing of the three races. In my opinion, the Preakness is the victim of the Kentucky Derby's success, or as T.D. Thornton said so well in his article June 12: "Underscoring how the Derby itself is devolving into a be-all/end-all, one-shot endeavor at the expense of the Triple Crown race that follows it, for the first time in 75 years, Mage was the only horse out of the Derby to enter...

There was an exciting race, a thrilling stretch duel between winner National Treasure (Quality Road) and runner-up Blazing Sevens (Good Magic), and the first-ever win in the GI Preakness S. by classy Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez. And think what you want of Bob Baffert, but his winning the first Triple Crown race he entered since the suspensions and bans had ended was a compelling chapter to this story. The man sure can train a race horse. But those stories will start to drift away as we head to...

Nostalgia, they say, isn't quite what it used to be. In times past, it was not so much a wistful state of mind as an outright medical condition. The Union Army in the first two years of the Civil War reported precisely 2,588 cases, no fewer than 13 of which proved fatal. And I must admit to some concern that this may in fact be the version to which I am destined to succumb, nailed into the same coffin as the five-week Triple Crown. The whole premise of nostalgia is...

Pimlico, the home of a Triple Crown race, is rundown and needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Its sister track, Laurel isn't in much better shape. To have two tracks in such condition does not make for a sustainable model for the future of Maryland racing, a problem that track owners and politicians have been trying solve for more than a decade. But the latest round of give-and-take appears to have yielded a solution. Money once earmarked for a rebuild of both Pimlico and Laurel is expected to be...

Godolphin's First Mission (Street Sense), the runaway winner of the GIII Lexington S., completed his final major work Saturday ahead of next Saturday's GI Preakness S. at Pimlico. The colt covered five furlongs in :59.20 early yesterday morning at Churchill Downs. "He's lightly raced, but I liked what I saw of him all winter and into the Lexington," said trainer Brad Cox. "He bounced out of it in good shape and he's got a lot of talent. I'm looking forward to giving him a swing at a Grade I." Runner...