I'll Have Another: What the Experts Are Saying About Preakness Chances

Causal horse racing fans around the country would love for I’ll Have Another to win the Preakness and enter the final leg of the Triple Crown with a shot at becoming the first horse since 1978 to pull off one of the rarest accomplishments in all of sports.

So, what are the experts saying about his chances only 24 hours before the race?

The colt is looking good as he trains this week at Pimlico, according to Chris Korman of the Baltimore Sun:

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I'll Have Another did train Wednesday morning, and continues to look ready. There's much more activity at Pimlico now, but the colt deals with it well and has looked strong. A nine-week layoff between his first and second races this year – both first-place finishes, in the Robert Lewis and Santa Anita Derby – has him peaking now, O'Neill said.

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Doug O’Neill is the trainer, and while he has dealt with criticism in the past for training horses that break down, it sounds like this won’t be a concern this time around.  

While I’ll Have Another may have won the race by one-and-a-half lengths, many walked away from Churchill Downs believing Bodemeister was the better horse. The only reason he fell to second was the extreme length of the track. That may not be 100 percent accurate according to Bob Ehalt of FollowHorseRacing.com:

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I’ll Have Another beat Bodemeister and it’s not illogical to reason that in a shorter race, jockey Mario Gutierrez might have moved I’ll Have Another sooner and still might have collared Bodemeister. The margin of victory might have been smaller than the official margin of 1 1/2 lengths, but it might have been a victory for I’ll Have Another nonetheless.

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It’s an interesting theory and one that certainly places Ehalt in the minority.

But not everything this week is gushing with praise for the three-year-old.

Count The Atlantic’s Andrew Cohen among the group of people who won’t be rooting for a Triple Crown winner this year. Blame it on the drug violations of O’Neill:

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I'm not rooting for I'll Have Another because I am not a fan of trainers whose drug suspensions are endlessly stayed. I am not a fan of track officials and state regulators who slap wrists. I am not a fan of owners who tolerate it. And I am not a fan of an industry that allows all of this to occur and then turns to the betting public and its fans says "we are doing what we can about racing integrity." No, sir. Not for me. I'll be rooting for another horse and hoping, as always, that they all make it back home safe to the barn.

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O’Neill has had over 12 violations in four states in the last 14 years for using improper drugs on horses. As far as we know now, there is no reason to suspect the Kentucky Derby race was tainted in any way.

I’ll leave you with a few words from O’Neill, who sounds incredibly confident in his horse (via New York Daily News):

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We’re going to win. Obviously, we need a lot of racing luck. We need things to go our way, but if we have things go our way I think we’ll be very tough.

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So what do you think…does I’ll Have Another have what it takes? Or will his luck run out?

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