The Kentucky Derby after-party has been reduced to a table (or stable) for one. The Preakness, the second leg of thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown, will be contested Saturday with just a single horse moving on to Baltimore from Louisville: Derby winner Mage.
That’s it, that’s the list. The shortest list since before the Korean War.
It’s the first time in 75 years that only one Derby starter has entered the Preakness. In 1948, Citation won the Triple Crown in part by scaring off almost all the competition before it even began. He faced just five other horses in the first leg, three others in the second leg and seven in the Belmont.
Today, the lack of carryover from Derby to Preakness says as much about the anachronistic Triple Crown schedule as it does anything else. Modern thoroughbreds don’t race every two weeks, which is the requirement here if horses want to run in both. If Mage’s connections didn’t have an active Triple Crown bid, they probably wouldn’t be in Baltimore, either. (And even that wasn’t enough to get 2022 fluke Derby winner Rich Strike to enter the Preakness.)
The spacing between Mage’s four career races prior to this one: four weeks, four weeks and five weeks. Of the eight Preakness entrants, none has ever raced on fewer than three weeks’ rest. Other than Mage, the average time elapsed for the other seven Preakness horses since their last race will be 34 days on Saturday.
Mage, who won at Churchill Downs, is the only Kentucky Derby entrant taking part in the Preakness.
Julio Cortez/AP
Perhaps this lack of carryover from Derby to Preakness is an exception, but even then it’s not much of one. It’s now commonplace for horses that run in the Derby to skip the Preakness and point toward the Belmont in June—if not later in the summer. Still, horse racing continues to cling to its ancient calendar, even if its spring 3-year-old stars are no longer conditioned in a manner to adhere to it.
The format I’ve long favored is keeping the Derby on the first Saturday in May, running the Preakness on the first Saturday in June (or Memorial Day weekend) and then the Belmont on the Fourth of July. The Fourth is a sports broadcast desert, when the only competitions are hot dog-eating contests and midseason baseball games.
Some have broached an even wider spacing between races.
“I did see a format presented, on Twitter or something, where they ran the Derby in May, and then in July, ran the Preakness, and then in October, you ran the Belmont,” said Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey, who will have 15–1 shot Perform in the Preakness. “I didn’t think that was that bad of an idea. I don’t know if it was something I’d vote for or not. But if they came up with it, I don’t think I would fight it too much. But I am a traditionalist. I hate to see them keep changing a lot of different things. But it’s different times now.”
Anything that runs into football season risks being ignored completely by a mainstream audience, so that seems like too long a Triple Crown season. But it no longer needs to be condensed to three races in five weeks. That’s begging for mass defections by Derby horses.
And frankly, there already were enough of those before the Run for the Roses on May 6. Aspiring Derby entrant Wild On Ice had to be euthanized after a training injury, and five Derby horses scratched the week of the race—the most since 1936. That included the race-day sidelining of favored Forte by a Kentucky Horse Racing Commission veterinarian due to what was characterized as a minor issue with his right front leg.
Forte originally appeared headed to the Preakness to take on Mage, a horse Forte had already beaten twice this year, but that was halted by safeguards against running an unsound horse. The KHRC and the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) have rules that sideline horses who are put on the vet list for soundness concerns for 14 days, after which they must produce a satisfactory workout and a negative blood sample to return to racing.
So maybe we’ll see Forte in New York for the Belmont June 10th. Maybe not. Without him, the collection of horses taking on Mage lacks much gravitas—but there is a trainer of high intrigue on the grounds at Pimlico Race Course.
Bob Baffert is back. The most accomplished trainer in the sport was banned from the 2022 Triple Crown after a succession of race-day medication violations for his horses, and Churchill Downs tacked on a second-year suspension keeping him out of the Derby. But he’s free to contest this Preakness with National Treasure, the 4–1 third choice in the morning line.
“They just hung me out to dry,” Baffert told The Athletic this week, saying he was unfairly singled out and penalized in what was a long and bitter dispute with Churchill Downs. There is some sympathy within racing for Baffert, but also many who believe he got what he deserved.
The presence of Baffert, emerging from a cloud of controversy, combines with the absence of so many Derby horses after a spring of tragedy and attrition to form a microcosm of the sport’s issues.
Seven horses died at Churchill Downs from April 27–May 6. An eighth was euthanized on the track in front of a grandstand of horrified Mother’s Day spectators after breaking down May 14. With that grim backdrop, plus ongoing controversies about medication and a dwindling core of 3-year-old standouts, this Preakness is more about what’s wrong with horse racing than what’s right.
Mage might not have a lot to overcome in terms of competition Saturday, but the Kentucky Derby champion has significant work to do to rewrite the negative narrative of this Triple Crown campaign.
Sports Illustrated Studios, a division of Authentic Studios, in partnership with Spyglass Media Group, will produce an exclusive documentary on the life of renowned female horse jockey Julie Krone, the entertainment company announced on Thursday.
The documentary will highlight the numerous accomplishments of Krone, who is the only female jockey to win a Triple Crown race when she rode Colonial Affair to victory in the 1993 Belmont Stakes. Disaster would strike shortly thereafter however, as Krone was thrown from her horse and trampled during a race later that year, leaving her with devastating injuries and a fight for her life.
Krone returned to the saddle in 1994 after months of rehabilitation and healing, and went on to ride competitively for another decade. She bookended her career by becoming the first woman to win a Breeders' Cup race in 2003. She concluded her illustrious tenure with 3,704 professional wins and was the first woman inducted into the Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York.
"We are thrilled to bring Julie's incredible story to audiences across the world," Colin Smeeton, the president of Authentic Studios said in the press release. "Her resilience, skill, and passion have left an indelible mark on the sport of horse racing and serve as an inspiration to athletes everywhere."
The release date of the documentary has yet to be announced.
Sports Illustrated Cover Horse Racing: Closeup portrait of jockey Julie Krone (7) at Aqueduct Race Track. Jamaica, NY 4/18/1989 CREDIT: Heinz Kluetmeier (Photo by Heinz Kluetmeier /Sports Illustrated) (Set Number: X38124 TK5 ) / Sports Illustrated Cover
The chemo port is hidden beneath three layers of shirts and peals of laughter. Larry Demeritte is having far too much fun these days to waste precious time worrying about the cancer assailing his body. There is a dream horse to train, a dream race to run, a late-career climax to soak up.
Demeritte is flashing toothy smiles and telling jokes outside Barn 42 at Churchill Downs, the happiest man in racing’s happiest place this time of year. It’s the last Saturday in April, which means we’re approaching the first Saturday in May, the high holy day in American thoroughbred racing. The 70-something trainer (he won’t give up an exact age) has the first Kentucky Derby runner in his life in West Saratoga, a typical Demeritte bargain find that he’s turned into a graded stakes winner.
Demeritte eyed the gray son of Exaggerator in the auction ring in September 2022, one of the last horses up for bid at that Keeneland Yearling Sale in Lexington. He counseled owner Harry Veruchi to spend $11,000 for the colt, and Veruchi named him after the street he grew up on in Littleton, Colo. West Saratoga has since returned $460,140 in purse money on that modest initial investment.
Now, West Saratoga will try to win the $5 million Derby on Saturday. He is a long shot at 50–1, winless in his last four starts since capturing the Iroquois Stakes at Churchill last September. But Demeritte is an even longer shot—to be here with a horse, yes, but really to be here at all.
Demeritte says he was first diagnosed with cancer in 1996 and given five years to live. He says he was diagnosed again in 2018, and endured a bone marrow transplant at Vanderbilt University. He was given six months that time. He’s still here, radiating optimism and joy.
“I always say, doctors can’t count,” Demeritte says with a high-pitched giggle. “The doctor said I have cancer. I don’t say that, O.K.? I’m gonna do the treatments just in case they’re right, but I don’t look at it like I have anything wrong with me. I don’t ever sit and worry about what I have or what I’m dealing with.”
This is what Demeritte says he’s dealing with: multiple myeloma and amyloidosis. He gets a five-hour chemo treatment via a drip once a month in Frankfort, Ky. The most recent round of chemo was last week, knocking him back for a couple of days and limiting his duties with the string of horses he stables in Lexington. His legs swell up and fatigue sets in after working all day.
“There were some days when I didn’t think I’d survive,” he says. “I’d go to bed and I’m so sick and my prayer is, If I don’t wake up on this side, God will wake me on his side.”
The eternal wake-up call hasn’t come. And so Demeritte keeps showing up at the barn in the morning—representing his native Bahamas and diversity in horse racing, where he will be just the second Black trainer to saddle a Derby horse since 1951.
He drove his Toyota Tundra west on Interstate 64 to Louisville with a horse trailer attached and West Saratoga onboard late last week. He oversaw the colt’s final major pre-Derby workout Saturday. After a lifetime at the racetrack—including the last 48 years in the United States—the best medicine for Larry Demeritte now is seeing West Saratoga.
“Some days, my boys have to give me a ride home, I’m so sick,” Demeritte says. “But what’s the use staying at home feeling sorry for yourself, when the horses are going to bring a smile to your face watching them train? No, you’ve got to get up and go. Then go back home afterward and lie down after they make you feel good.”
Says Veruchi: “[The horse] is keeping him alive.”
West Saratoga is a long shot in the Kentucky Derby, but won the the Iroquois Stakes at Churchill last September.
Matt Stone/The Courier Journal / USA
Larry Demeritte doesn’t hunt pigeons at Churchill Downs anymore. But he did, half a lifetime ago as a fresh American immigrant, in the 1970s.
Demeritte says he was living in one of the barns on the Churchill backside where he was working as a groom. He put his childhood Boy Scout training to work, climbing on the barn roof with a slingshot to take aim at the birds that have roosted there since time immemorial. That was dinner.
“When you’re a Boy Scout, you learn survival,” he says. “So all we’d do is take a little rice, cooked rice, put it in a brown paper bag and go and get the sling and get the little birds. We put them on a hanger and barbecued them. You had to learn how to catch fire with one match. I know what it is to survive.”
Eating pigeons was part of life growing up in the Bahamas. So was going to the racetrack, where Larry’s father was a trainer. He and his brothers would get out of school at noon on Fridays and catch a ride on a neighbor’s truck to the track—against the wishes of his mom and grandmother.
“We’d get a beating every Friday night, but that didn’t matter,” Demeritte says. “We’d go every Friday to the races.”
As a teenager, Larry began training his own horses. He says he had 25 horses by age 19 and was winning training titles. But he’d been smitten by Secretariat winning the Triple Crown in 1973 and knew he wanted to experience American racing. He came to the U.S. in ’76 as a groom, starting at the bottom.
In 1977, he was the groom for Silver Series, a talented horse that won five races that year, including the Hawthorne Derby, Ohio Derby and American Derby Handicap. “I slept with this horse,” a young Demeritte told the Chicago Tribune during that summer run of wins.
By 1981, Demeritte struck out on his own as a trainer. Early returns were meager. He was 0-for-48, according to Equibase statistics, before breaking through with Tom Tale in December ’84. Demeritte’s business remained modest; he was a quintessential ham-and-egg trainer on the Kentucky circuit, working the claiming game and looking for bargains at sales.
The Derby was a dream, but a fuzzy one. Demeritte didn’t often trade in horses of that caliber. He ran some horses on the Derby Day undercard, and the 1998 Louisville Courier-Journal Derby special section included a photo of Demeritte and his wife, Beryl. The caption on the picture noted that Demeritte’s tie was “bearing the coat of arms of his native Bahamas.” (Another photo subject in the special section that year was “New York developer Donald Trump” who “brought Melania Knauss, of Vienna, Austria, to the Derby.” Trump told the paper he was betting on Stephen Got Even in that Derby; the horse finished 14th.)
The following year, Demeritte guided the $3,000 purchase of a yearling named Daring Pegasus. Veruchi was a co-owner, his first partnership with Demeritte. A strong 2-year-old campaign had the horse on the 2001 Derby Trail, but the step up in competition in Derby prep races was more than Daring Pegasus could handle.
Demeritte moved into the realm of six-figure annual purse earnings in the 2000s but never landed a breakthrough horse. In ’10, he finally recorded his first graded stakes win with Memorial Maniac (that remains Demeritte’s highest-earning year, at $459,616). He didn’t win another until West Saratoga captured the Iroquois last fall.
Demeritte and West Saratoga are both long shots.
Matt Stone/The Courier Journal / USA
“I told the boys in the barn, this is our big horse,” Demeritte says. “This is the first horse I’ve trained in a long time that has gears. You have to manage him right. I feel like the route we took was the best route for him, to get him here without a lot of stress. When the right day comes with the big boys, he’ll be ready for them.”
The big boys are probably not game-planning to beat West Saratoga. But all Derby dreams are alive at this juncture, and Demeritte is as optimistic about this race as he is about his cancer fight.
“Oh, he knows he’s going to win,” says Veruchi, who walked to the old Centennial Race Track as a kid in Colorado, then went on to own a car dealership. “He says we’re going to win. I always ask him, ‘What if we don’t do good in this race, do you have a Plan B?’ No. No Plan B.
“Fifty-to-one, horse don’t know. He has no idea what the odds are. All he knows is he’s going to get out there and run his ass off.”
Time-honored tradition calls for the winning trainer of the Derby to meet the media on the Sunday morning after the race. It’s an easy duty, basking in the glow of a lifetime achievement. But if West Saratoga wins the Run for the Roses, don’t look for Larry Demeritte at Barn 42 on Sunday.
He says he will be at Fork of Elkhorn Baptist Church in Midway, Ky., as usual, taking part in worship services and a men’s discussion group. Veruchi went to church with Demeritte this past Sunday.
“My encouragement is always that the men reach out to the young men in the church,” Demeritte says of his discussion group theme. “I have a good Sunday school with a lot of men successful in life. We have to reach the younger people, so they can have hope. Kids give up too easily. That’s something I don’t want to see. I want a kid to follow their dream and find their goal in life and work at it, and be successful at it.”
The Derby has had an endless wellspring of people and animals that are easy to root for. Larry Demeritte and West Saratoga now join that age-old list. But Demeritte sees his role more as a representative for several groups than the object of affection.
He’s here for Black people in racing, who once dominated the Derby in its early days but have been marginalized for more than a century. It’s why he employs several young Black assistants, such as Donte Lowery, the exercise rider and groom for West Saratoga, who says his boss “inspires me in a big way.”
Demeritte and Lowery laugh together outside of the barn.
Matt Stone/The Courier Journal / USA
“That’s why I do what I do,” Demeritte says. “And that’s why I help keep young people around me. That’s my encouragement. I don’t want it to take this long for Donte or my other boys at the barn to have to wait this long to go to the Derby as a trainer. That’s my goal.
“We are linked. When something goes bad, they group us as a Black community. So if something good is happening for the Black community, why wouldn’t I bring them along? Let them experience the goodness of this country. There is so much good here in America. I get so upset when I see the kids not appreciating their country.”
He’s here for cancer patients. The Kentucky Oaks on Friday is a long-standing breast cancer awareness day, rife with pink regalia and a survivors’ walk on the track. Derby Day now has its own rallying cry for those fighting the disease.
“I feel, I guess, like I’m on a mission,” Demeritte says. “The Kentucky Derby’s great, but I feel it’s deeper than that. If I can be [an] encouragement to people with cancer, if I can help someone, encourage them to make their journey easier, that’s what I want to do.”
And he’s here for his Bahamian brethren. About 20 family members will be at Churchill on Saturday, many of them coming from the Bahamas, here to see a moment decades in the making and wholly improbable.
“This means a whole lot, more than really I can describe,” Demeritte says. “This goes very deep. I feel like I’m representing a lot of people, O.K.?”
Larry Demeritte is representing a lot of people with a smile on his ageless face and a chemo port in his chest. He is a long shot in the Kentucky Derby and in life, a guy who shouldn’t be at Churchill Downs Saturday—literally and figuratively. But a bargain colt has brought him this far, and now there is no keeping him away, no keeping him down.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency issued a news release that raised eyebrows and revived suspicions in thoroughbred racing. In the first four months of 2024, the CBP’s Port of Cincinnati office intercepted eight shipments of venom from snakes, scorpions and spiders, plus other substances used as performance enhancers in horses.
The venoms have been used at racetracks as numbing agents for horses, allowing them to run through injuries. The shipments were coming from Mexico, according to the release, and some were headed to people “with nexus to racing or other horse performance venues.”
With the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, this drug bust was another periodic reminder of the drug cloud and attendant equine safety issues that hover over horse racing. So was the recent New York Times documentary, “Broken Horses,” which examined the spates of equine deaths that rocked the sport last year—including 12 at Churchill Downs in the weeks before and after the Derby, which led to an unprecedented shutdown and relocation of the track’s spring meet. And there was the news from Oaklawn Park in Arkansas about two horses under the care of trainer Tim Martin who died suddenly this week.
There are many people attempting to clean up the sport, and progress has been made. The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) is making strides as a regulatory body, though resistance persists in some corners. In general, racetrack equine deaths have declined over time (though there was a slight rise last year, up from 1.25 per 1,000 starts in 2022 to 1.32 in ’23). It’s harder now to sweep aside horse deaths without some measure of accountability.
But controversies past and present are always close at hand. Take a glance at the entries for the Derby, and a couple of names provide context for the inner conflicts of racing.
One is trainer Saffie Joseph, who will saddle Catalytic in the Run for the Roses. Last year at this time, Joseph was sent packing from Churchill after two of his horses died suddenly, Parents Pride and Chasing Artie. Joseph was suspended and his Derby colt, Lord Miles, was not allowed to run. “I was a scapegoat,” Joseph said at the time, inferring that the track had to find someone to punish amid a cluster of pre-Derby horse deaths.
By the end of June, Joseph had been reinstated at Churchill after a Kentucky Horse Racing Commission investigation. "We remain deeply concerned about the condition of Parents Pride and Chasing Artie that led to their sudden death,” said Bill Mudd, president and chief operating officer of Churchill Downs, Inc. “However, given the details available to us as a result of the KHRC investigation, there is no basis to continue Joseph's suspension.”
Joseph, who said he has never spoken to Churchill CEO Bill Carstanjen, is wondering where he needs to go to have his reputation restored after necropsies of the horses did not conclude anything nefarious.
“It crushes you,” he says. “I’m glad everything worked out and the truth was revealed. One of the horses had rat poison in it—they said that the level wasn’t enough to cause it, but they’re not going to say that. But if you look at the report, it says that. Did that cause it? We don’t know.
“I knew we didn’t do anything. It destroys you.”
Kentucky Derby horse Track Phantom is co-owned by Brewster and trained by Steve Asmussen.
Matt Stone/The Courier Journal / USA
Another name: Clark Brewster, part owner of Derby runner Track Phantom. He’s better known in racing as Bob Baffert’s voluble, caustic and contentious lawyer.
Baffert is the biggest trainer in the sport and also a current pariah at Churchill. He won a record-breaking seven Kentucky Derbys but had to give the last one back, the 2021 triumph by Medina Spirit, which was stripped after the horse tested positive for a prohibited race-day medication. That has spurred an endless feud between Baffert and Carstanjen.
Baffert initially was assessed a two-year ban from competition at Churchill, knocking him out of the 2022 and ’23 Derbys. Baffert sued Churchill in March ’22, but the case was dismissed last year. Then last July, the suspension was extended another year, with a Churchill release saying that "Mr. Baffert continues to peddle a false narrative concerning the failed drug test of Medina Spirit … A trainer who is unwilling to accept responsibility for multiple drug test failures in our highest-profile races cannot be trusted to avoid future misconduct."
That showdown added another chapter this spring when Amr Zedan, owner of the Baffert-trained standout Muth, attempted to sue his way into this Derby. That suit, which cited “Carstanjen egomania” in arguing that Baffert was being unfairly punished, also was unsuccessful. But Muth looms as a potential Preakness favorite and Triple Crown spoiler two weeks after the Derby.
On the slight chance that long-shot Track Phantom wins the Derby, keep the cameras rolling on Brewster. If he encounters Carstanjen in the winner’s circle it could be spicy.
Churchill Downs has gone to massive lengths to gussy itself up for the 150th Derby, sinking $200 million into remodeling its paddock area. The result is a three-level masterpiece of modern architecture that dramatically modernizes the place. It is primarily targeted for use one weekend a year by the rich, of course, but will also be enjoyed and appreciated by everyday racegoers for years to come.
There is change on the other side of the grandstand as well, less glamorous but more closely aligned to the survival of horse racing: The dirt racing surface has been redone. It’s darker and, some trainers said in recent days, deeper than it had been. A new fleet of tractors harrow the dirt between races and during morning training hours, and new methods of testing the track have been implemented. The horses are wearing biofeedback sensors that can help spot issues with stride and potentially flag developing injuries. A safety management committee composed of trainers, jockeys and other track workers meets once a week.
How much will all that help? It remains to be seen. But the changes are a tacit acknowledgment that the one thing that can kill horse racing is the killing of horses.
