Preakness 2016 Post Time: Start Time, Schedule and More for 141st Race

While Nyquist is a third of the way there, the road to the Triple Crown won't get any easier for the Kentucky Derby winner as he heads to Baltimore for Saturday's Preakness Stakes.

Nyquist lived up to the hype at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, holding off Exaggerator en route to triumph in the Run for the Roses. Recent history indicates he has a great chance of repeating that success at Pimlico Race Course.

Since 2002, seven horses have won both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. Nyquist's chances increased further after Gun Runner, who finished third in the Derby, pulled out of the Preakness, per Melissa Hoppert of the New York Times.

On Saturday, Nyquist will either get one step closer to history or join a long list of Derby winners whose Triple Crown hopes died at Pimlico.

Preakness Schedule

When: 6:45 p.m. ET, Saturday, May 21

Where: Pimlico Race Course, Baltimore

TV Info: NBC

Live Stream: NBC Sports Live Extra

Preakness TV Coverage

Date	Time (ET)	Event	Channel
Friday, May 20	3 p.m.	Black Eyed Susan	NBCSN
Saturday, May 21	2:30 p.m.	Preakness Saturday	NBCSN
Saturday, May 21	5 p.m.	Preakness Stakes	NBC

Preakness Preview

While Gun Runner's absence strengthens Nyquist's chances of winning, the field for this year's Preakness Stakes is full of horses who could derail Nyquist's bid for horse-racing immortality.

Exaggerator gave a strong account of himself at Churchill Downs in a losing effort. He was running faster than Nyquist down the final stretch, but he ran out of track to overtake the eventual champion:

Since the Preakness is the shortest of the three Triple Crown events, Exaggerator's jockey, Kent Desormeaux, can't afford to leave that much space between himself and the leader once again. A smaller field should allow him more space on the track, which will enable him to stay closer to the front.

In addition, the Baltimore Sun's Jonas Shaffer wrote that the short amount of time between the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes could work in Exaggerator's favor:

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Nyquist covered the FrontRunner's 1 1/16 miles in 1 minute, 44.89 seconds, the second-slowest winning run in the race in the past 28 years. It came just 19 days after the Del Mar Futurity, the 3-year-old colt's shortest turnaround yet.

The break between the first two legs of the Triple Crown is five days shorter.

"Obviously, numbers-wise, horse-for-horse-wise, it's tough to think we can beat him, right?" Desormeaux said Tuesday at Pimlico Race Course. "But … the strongest attribute that Exaggerator has is his ability to recover, and as you know, this Preakness is run back in two weeks. That's not normal in this day and age, to run a horse back that quickly."

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Similarly, fatigue won't be an issue whatsoever for Stradivari, whose last race was over a month ago at Keeneland on April 17. The colt is something of an unknown quantity, having run just three races in his competitive career.

Trainer Todd Pletcher acknowledged that Stradivari's low volume of graded races brings both positives and negatives, per Jonathan Lintner of the Courier-Journal:

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On one side of it you have a fresh horse that hasn't been through the rigors of the prep series and a race like the Derby. On the other side of the coin you have a horse that's pretty light on experience and is giving up some seasoning to some horses that have been on that campaign. You might gain a bit in one area and lose a bit in the other, but historically I think it takes a pretty special horse to be able to compete in races like that against these types of horses. We are really impressed with the way he's run and the way he's trained.

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TVG's Mike Joyce is sold based on what he has seen from Stradivari so far:

While both Exaggerator and Stradivari should be strong contenders, anything other than a Nyquist victory Saturday will be a surprise. Should he ultimately fail to win the Triple Crown, the most likely stumbling block is the Belmont Stakes.

Fatigue starts becoming a serious factor at Belmont. Running three major races in the space of a month is a brutal slog for even the most well-conditioned horse.

At the Preakness, Nyquist should have more than enough left in the tank to handle the competition and come out on top.