Preakness Odds 2015: Examining Recent Vegas Lines for Entire Field
The 2015 Preakness Stakes won't be run until Saturday afternoon, but the outlook of the Triple Crown's second leg has already changed over race week and continues to do so.
Rumors swirled about the availability of trainer Todd Pletcher's quartet of horses initially slated for the Preakness, and he dropped the bombshell Tuesday that none of the four would race, as Ron Mitchell of the Blood-Horse reported. That could leave as few as seven or eight horses making up the field for Saturday, where American Pharoah looks to keep pursuit of a Triple Crown alive.
The race odds, according to Odds Shark, have yet to be updated with the proper amount of horses, but it figures to have little impact on the vast superiority of three favorites.
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Before Wednesday night's post positions draw, let's take a look at the official field.
2015 Preakness Stakes
| American Pharoah | 5-6 |
| Firing Line | 5-1 |
| Dortmund | 11-2 |
| Competitive Edge | 14-1 |
| Materiality | 14-1 |
| Carpe Diem | 18-1 |
| Danzig Moon | 25-1 |
| Divining Rod | 25-1 |
| Bodhisattva | 40-1 |
| Stanford | 40-1 |
| Grand Bili | 50-1 |
| Tale of Verve | 50-1 |
Note: Highlighted horses have withdrawn from the race, per previous reports.
Horses to Watch
American Pharoah
The only way American Pharoah hadn't won entering the Kentucky Derby was in stunning, come-from-behind fashion against top-of-the-line competition. After checkmarking that box, next up is a quest at horse racing lore.
OK, perhaps winning the Derby is grounds for that regardless. But American Pharoah can end a nearly 50-year drought without a Triple Crown by winning just two more times over the next five weeks.
Virtually all of the threats among the Preakness field are horses that American Pharoah just bested at Churchill Downs, which bodes well for the favorite considering no dangerous opponent has a leg up on rest time. And with the way he's running at Churchill Downs this week before traveling to Maryland, as the Courier-Journal's horse racing Twitter feed shows, he looks to be in good shape:
If you take into account the simple fact that American Pharoah just convincingly won two weeks ago practically against these very same horses, one could argue this race may as well not be run. But even among that incredible run at the Derby, he only finished one length in front.
Unless he's jammed in on the inside, however, American Pharoah looks poised to do that again Saturday.
Dortmund
A budding rivalry has long been brewing between American Pharoah and Dortmund, and trainer Bob Baffert is in the middle of it.
The Hall of Fame trainer has been in charge of both horses as they practically assumed co-favorite status for the Derby, and neither proved to be ill-advised. Dortmund led the field for a large percentage of the race before American Pharoah overtook him and Firing Line slipped into second place in surprise fashion.
Baffert had no reservations about running Dortmund even in spite of American Pharoah chasing the Triple Crown. Pharoah owner Ahmed Zayat took it to another level with some trash talk, as per ESPN.com's Bob Ehalt:
"Dortmund is a very nice horse, but we beat him in the Derby and we'll beat him again. It's as simple as that. In my opinion, he [Pharoah] has the talent to beat the horses he's already beaten, and the fresh horses [running in the Preakness] who did not run in the Derby are not as tough as the Derby horses.
"
Baffert is attempting to produce the fourth horse of his career to win the Derby and the Preakness—none have completed the trifecta at the Belmont Stakes. But if another horse is going to get in American Pharoah's way in that regard, it's likely to be from Baffert's other stable at Pimlico.
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