Preakness Stakes 2012: Current Purse for Potential Winners

As much as the Triple Crown races are about pride and pageantry, they are also about cold, hard cash. I'll Have Another earned $1.5 million of the total $2.2 million purse by winning the Kentucky Derby, and he and his handlers will be looking to nab even more by winning the Preakness Stakes.

Although the total breakdown for the Preakness isn't set in stone, the purse is set at $1 million as it has been every year since 1997. Last year, Shackleford won at Pimlico and took $600,000 of the $1 million purse. It isn't yet known for sure how much of a cut the winner will get in 2012, but a modest increase on that $600,000 is a good bet.

For I'll Have Another, jockey Mario Gutierrez and trainer Doug O'Neill, such a large purse is obviously quite enticing. I have to believe that the more important thing to them is capturing the second leg of the Triple Crown, though. No horse has won the sport's three most important races in one year since Affirmed in 1978, but I'll Have Another will have a shot.

The last horse to win the first two Triple Crown races in a season was Big Brown back in 2008, but he pulled up lame in the Belmont Stakes and was never a factor. I'll Have Another's support system would love to have the same opportunity that Big Brown did, but that can't happen unless he is victorious on Saturday.

Plenty of horses will be looking to play spoiler and snatch that winner's purse from the hooves of I'll Have Another. Bodemeister is the current favorite after running second in the Kentucky Derby, and provided the Bob Baffert-trained speedster can maintain his pace unlike in the Run for the Roses, he has a great shot to win.

Additionally, four other horses who ran in the Kentucky Derby will hope for better luck in the Preakness. Went The Day Well, Creative Cause, Daddy Nose Best and Optimizer are all set to run on Saturday and a victory would surely curtail their Kentucky Derby disappointment.

The rest of the field will be made up of newcomers in the form of Tiger Walk, Teeth of the Dog, Pretension, Zetterholm and Cozzetti. Since none of them were afforded the opportunity to compete for that $2.2 million purse in the Kentucky Derby, their respective jockeys and trainers will likely have an all-or-nothing attitude.

When the horses are running in the Preakness Stakes they obviously won't have any concept of what is up for grabs, but you had better believe the jockeys will. Not every jockey gets many chances to run in a race where the stakes are this high, so there will be 11 very dangerous horses going all-out for the win.

A big part of that is for the accolades that come with it, but there is no doubt that the $1 million purse has something to do with it as well.

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