Unbelievable:Winner of the Kentucky Derby, faces seven other horses.

Hours before Kentucky Derby champion Mystik Dan attempts to win the Triple Crown again in a row when he faces up against seven other horses in the Preakness Stakes, rain was falling at Pimlico Race Course on Saturday.
Since Justify in 2018, he would be the first person to win the Derby and the Preakness simultaneously. That would set up an unprecedented and historic moment for the next Belmont Stakes, which would feature a Triple Crown on the line. Due to renovations at Belmont Park in New York City, the race will be held for the first time at the Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York.

Mystik Dan will have to beat Bob Baffert-trained Imagination, Brad Cox’s Catching Freedom and Chad Brown’s Tuscan Gold, who are the main challengers, and the Preakness could be run on a muddy track, with showers expected to continue throughout the afternoon. Baffert was set to saddle two horses in the race set to go off just after 7 p.m. EDT, but morning line favorite Muth was scratched during the week because of a fever. Mystik Dan opened Saturday as the 3-1 favorite, with Catching Freedom and Tuscan Gold each 7-2 and Imagination 9-2“Catching Freedom trained really well going into the Derby,” Mystik Dan’s trainer, Kenny McPeek, said this week. “He’s a very nice horse. And Bob, he wouldn’t bring a horse without it being a good horse, and Chad’s also got a horse coming out of (finishing third behind winner Catching Freedom in) the Louisiana Derby. Yeah, it’s not a given.” It was not a given that McPeek would send Mystik Dan to Baltimore on a two-week turnaround from the colt’s exhausting win by a nose in the Kentucky Derby. But he’s one of three horses from that race running in the Preakness, up from one last year and two in 2022.

Many trainers’ reluctance to do the Derby-Preakness double, once the norm for horses on the Triple Crown trail, has raised questions about the prestige of the middle jewel and concerns that it has become the unwanted stepchild of the series. There are debates about spacing the races out to adapt to modern thoroughbreds that race less frequently than in previous eras.