Preakness 2024: Kentucky Derby champ Mystik Dan a wait-and-see for second leg of Triple Crown

Kentucky Derby champion Mystik Dan will rest and recover over the next week before his owners and trainer Kenny McPeek make a “last-minute decision” about whether to point him toward the May 18 Preakness Stakes, expected to feature a field dominated by fresher horses.

As the new champ posed for photos outside his barn at Churchill Downs on Sunday morning, co-owner Lance Gasaway said he would only want his horse to run in the $2 million Preakness if he has a strong chance to win. He noted that Bob Baffert-trained Muth, who beat Mystik Dan in the March 30 Arkansas Derby, is one of several well-rested contenders lining up to run at Pimlico Race Course.

“You take those horses in there at full speed, who have been off a month and a half and we’re coming in off two weeks, that’s a big ask of this horse,” Gasaway told reporters in Louisville. “We’ll have to see how he comes out of the race.”

McPeek said Mystik Dan will walk the next few days before he returns to training on the track at Churchill Downs, probably Wednesday. “So we’ll watch him over the next week, and probably decide then,” he said of a possible Preakness entry (the deadline is May 13). “It will be a last-minute decision. We’ll let him tell us.”

McPeek, who has won all three Triple Crown races after Mystik Dan outlasted Sierra Leone and Forever Young in a thrilling photo finish Saturday, acknowledged his reluctance to run back on short rest.

“When I ran him back in two weeks before, it completely backfired on me,” he said, alluding to a pair of starts from Mystik Dan’s 2-year-old season. He finished fifth in a flat performance at Churchill Downs in November, 13 days after his breakout victory on the same track.

If Mystik Dan were to skip the Preakness, he would be the second Derby champion to do so in the last three years after longshot winner Rick Strike went straight from Kentucky to the Belmont Stakes in 2022. Such a move would rekindle fears that the second jewel in the Triple Crown is becoming an afterthought. Few trainers even consider running their Derby horses two weeks later at Pimlico, believing the quick turnaround to be too great an ask for 3-year-olds no longer conditioned for such condensed rigor.

The last four Preakness winners did not run in the Derby. Justify was the last to win both races on his way to a Triple Crown in 2018.

Muth earned enough qualifying points for a berth in the Derby and would have been among the top contenders, but his trainer, Baffert, remains barred from Churchill Downs because of the medication violation that cost Medina Spirit his 2021 Derby victory. Owner Amr Zedan sued unsuccessfully to get his horse into the 20-horse Derby field. Muth will instead enter the Preakness off seven weeks of rest.

Baffert won his eighth Preakness last year with a similarly fresh horse, National Treasure, and his pair of Muth and Imagination, runner-up in the April 6 Santa Anita Derby, will present a daunting obstacle to any Derby runner looking to bounce back at Pimlico.

Neither Sierra Leone nor Forever Young, the two horses that nearly caught Mystik Dan in the Derby, will run in the Preakness. Sierra Leone is headed for trainer Chad Brown’s barn at Saratoga, New York, where he’ll train for the June 8 Belmont Stakes (to be held at Saratoga Race Course because Belmont Park is under renovation). Forever Young is scheduled to fly back to Japan before a possible return to U.S. competition later this year.

Trainer Brad Cox hasn’t ruled out a Preakness run for Catching Freedom, but the Maryland Jockey Club did not include the fourth-place Derby finisher on its initial list of possible contenders, indicating that Cox is leaning against it.

Other possible Preakness entrants include Seize the Grey, winner of the Pat Day Mile on the Derby undercard and trained by six-time Preakness winner D. Wayne Lukas; Copper Tax, winner of the April 20 Federico Tesio Stakes at Laurel Park, and Informed Patriot, winner of the April 20 Bathhouse Row Stakes at Arkansas’ Oaklawn Park and trained by two-time Preakness winner Steve Asmussen.

The connections of Uncle Heavy, fifth in the April 6 Wood Memorial, and Tuscan Gold, third in the Louisiana Derby and trained by two-time Preakness winner Brown, will decide between the Preakness and the Peter Pan Stakes at New York’s Aqueduct Racetrack, the Daily Racing Form reported.

Pimlico was the scene for one of McPeek’s most satisfying victories when the relentless filly Swiss Skydiver outfought Baffert-trained Derby champion Authentic in the pandemic-delayed 2020 Preakness.

When Maryland Jockey Club interim president Mike Rogers called Sunday morning to extend a formal Preakness invitation to Mystik Dan, McPeek thanked him and asked but one question: Would his ubiquitous yellow Labrador, Sonny, be allowed to accompany the Derby champion to Pimlico?

It was a jovial moment, and Preakness organizers hope to have both horse and dog on hand for the third Saturday in May.

Whether that will be a reality remains an open question.