Preakness Stakes
| Grade I race | |
"The Second Jewel of the Triple Crown"
"The Run for the Black-Eyed Susans" |
|
| Location |
Pimlico Race Course Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
|---|---|
| Inaugurated | 1873 |
| Race type | Thoroughbred |
| Website | Preakness Stakes |
| Race information | |
| Distance | 1 3⁄16 miles (9.5 furlongs) |
| Record | 1:53.00, Secretariat (1973) |
| Surface | Dirt |
| Track | Left-handed |
| Qualification | 3-year-old |
| Weight |
Colt/Gelding: 126 pounds (57 kg) Filly: 121 pounds (55 kg) |
| Purse | US$1,500,000 |
The Preakness Stakes is an American flat thoroughbred horse race held on the third Saturday in May each year at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland. It is a Grade I race run over a distance of 9.5 furlongs (1 3⁄16 miles (1,900 m)) on dirt. Colts and geldings carry 126 pounds (57 kg); fillies 121 lb (55 kg). It is the second jewel of the Triple Crown, held two weeks after the Kentucky Derby and three weeks before the Belmont Stakes.
First run in 1873, the Preakness Stakes was named by a former Maryland governor after a winning colt at Pimlico. The race has been termed "The Run for the Black-Eyed Susans" because a blanket of yellow flowers altered to resemble Maryland's state flower is placed around the winner's neck. Attendance at the Preakness Stakes ranks second in North America among equestrian events, only surpassed by the Kentucky Derby.
The 142nd running of the Preakness Stakes will take place on Saturday, May 20, 2017.
Two years before the Kentucky Derby was run for the first time, Pimlico introduced its new stakes race for three-year-olds, the Preakness, during its first-ever spring race meet in 1873. Former Maryland governor Oden Bowie named the then mile and one-half (2.41 km) race in honor of the colt Preakness from Milton Holbrook Sanford's Preakness Stables in Preakness, Wayne Township, New Jersey, who won the Dinner Party Stakes on the day Pimlico opened (October 25, 1870). The New Jersey name was said to have come from the Native American name Pra-qua-les ("Quail Woods") for the area. After Preakness won the Dinner Party Stakes, his jockey, Billy Hayward, untied a silk bag of gold coins that hung from a wire stretched across the track from the judges' stand. This was the supposed way that the "wire" at the finish line was introduced and how the awarding of "purse" money came to be. In reality, the term "purse", meaning prize money, had been in use for well over a century.
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