THE PREAKNESS STAKES

The Preakness Stakes is a race of a mile and three-sixteenths for three-year-olds, run in Baltimore in the middle of May, two weeks after the Kentucky Derby. It is the second leg of the Triple Crown and the shortest of the three.

It is two years older than the Derby, and it is where a Triple Crown is kept alive or ended.

The Dinner Party

The race is named for a horse. Pimlico opened in 1870 with the Dinner Party Stakes, and a colt called Preakness won it. Three years later a former governor of Maryland named the new race for him.

It did not always stay at home. It was run in New York in 1890, not at all from 1891 to 1893, and at Gravesend, on Coney Island, from 1894 to 1908. It came back to Pimlico in 1909.

The trophy is the Woodlawn Vase, made by Tiffany in 1860 and first given to a Preakness winner in 1917. The winner keeps a replica. The original lives at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

The garland is called the black-eyed Susans, after the state flower, which does not bloom until summer. It is made of chrysanthemums.

When the race is over, the weathervane in the infield is painted in the winner’s colours, as it has been since 1909.

Laurel

In 2026, for the first time in a hundred and eighteen years, the Preakness was run away from Pimlico.

The old track had last been rebuilt in the 1950s, and in 2019 seven thousand of its grandstand seats were closed as unsafe. It has been pulled down for a rebuilding of four hundred million dollars, with a hotel and a training centre, and the race went twenty miles south to Laurel Park while the work was done.

It is due back in Baltimore in 2027, at the new Pimlico.

Among American races, only the Derby draws a bigger crowd.

What to Know

It is run on a Saturday. The Black-Eyed Susan Stakes, for fillies, is run the day before.

The drink is the Black-Eyed Susan: vodka, elderflower liqueur and fruit juice.

A lounge suit, and a hat if one likes.

When the Derby winner comes to Baltimore, the Triple Crown is at stake, and the crowd knows it.

The mistake is to leave after the race. The painting of the weathervane is the day’s own ceremony.

The Court

The Preakness Stakes is not the Court’s own. Boxes and seats above the finish are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Baltimore or Washington, and the table afterward. A member who took the Derby can have the Preakness arranged with it.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.