Preakness Stakes

Curlin wins the Preakness Stakes!

Street Sense - second

Hard Spun - third

CP West - fourth

Replay

The 139th Belmont Stakes is Saturday, June 9

Pimlico was built under the direction of Maryland Governor Oden Bowie in 1870. The track was first plowed by an immigrant from the Pimlico section of London. The Maryland Agricultural Society hosted a fair on the site before leasing it to the race's current host the Maryland Jockey Club in 1869. It's the second oldest active track in the country (Saratoga 1864). Unfortunately, the original Victorian clubhouse burned down in 1966, leaving only the iron horse-and-jockey weather vane that sat atop its roof.

Traditionally, after every Preakness Stakes the weather vane is repainted with the colors of the winning stable's silks.

Preakness
To honor the first great horse to race at Pimlico, Preakness, Governor Bowie proposed a stakes race for three-year-olds at 1-1/2 miles. The Preakness Stakes was thus inaugurated in 1873, two years before Col. M. Lewis Clark's vision would bring the Kentucky Derby into the world.

The Preakness stayed at Pimlico throughout the 1870s and `80s, but financial problems struck the track and the Maryland Jockey Club, and the race was moved to New York in 1890, when it was run at Morris Park. The Preakness continued to be run there off and on for nearly two decades, with Gravesend race track in Brooklyn hosting the race 15 times.

The Triple Crown
In 1909, with the Maryland Jockey Club emerging from its financial difficulties, the Preakness came back home and has never left. That year's renewal was contested at one mile. The race was stretched out to 1-1/8 miles in 1911. The race was established at its current length of 1-3/16 miles in 1925. For most of the 1920s and early `30s, the race was contested in early May, before the Kentucky Derby. In 1930, Gallant Fox's Triple Crown-winning effort required him winning the Preakness on May 9 and the Kentucky Derby eight days later. In the mid-1930s, the race was moved to mid-May, putting it one week after the Kentucky Derby. The current spacing of two weeks between races was established by the late 1940s.

Woodlawn Vase
The elegant Woodlawn Vase, originally created by Tiffany and Company in 1860 as a trophy for the now defunct Woodlawn Racing Association in Louisville, is presented annually to the Preakness winner.

The beautiful silver design assessed in 1983 for $1 million, is easily the most valuable trophy in American sports. A smaller sterling silver replica, valued at $30,000, is awarded to the winning owner of the Preakness Stakes on a permanent basis. The perpetual is on display at The Baltimore Museum of Art and is brought to Pimlico Race Course under guard for the annual running of the Preakness.

Black-Eyed Susans
It remains a long-standing tradition to present the winner of the Preakness a blanket of Black-Eyed Susans, which is draped across the shoulders of the winning
horse.

Colonel Edward R. Bradley's Bimelech in 1940 was the first winner to wear the floral blanket of Black-Eyed Susans.

Construction of the blanket has varied in method through time. The current Black-Eyed Susan blanket is created shortly before Preakness Day. Three ladies work full-time for two days to complete the project. The blanket is
composed of more than 80 bunches of Viking daisies.

Upon completion, the center of the daisies are daubed with black lacquer to recreate the appearance of a Black-Eyed Susan. The blanket is then sprayed with water and refrigerated until Preakness Day, when it is delivered to the track,to be worn by the Preakness winner. Black-Eyed Susans, declared the state flower by the
Maryland legislature in 1918 and the Preakness flower in 1940, do not bloom until June in Maryland. It is said the Susan's flower usually has 13 petals, which is
taken to symbolize the 13 original colonies, of which Maryland was one. The flower reproduces the state's black and yellow colors.