Preakness 2016 Post Positions: Winners and Losers of the Post Draw
If a post draw happened and no one was there to see, did it happen?
The 141st Preakness Stakes, hosted by the Xanadu that is Pimlico Race Course on May 21, held its post draw Wednesday night. It was supposed stream live on DRF.com, but that was a post-time scratch, at least at your correspondent’s press box.
NBC Sports gave this post draw the ol’ heave ho, so that leads us to piece together who won and who lost based on a few numbers and running style.
This race doesn’t seem to have the carbonation of some past renewals of the Preakness. Hard to put a finger on it. Maybe it’s because the big horse (Nyquist) stands so much taller than the rest.
It’s reminiscent of 2008 when it was the Big Brown party, a horse of singular dominance.
Well then, here we are, in a year that appears to have a horse every bit as dominant as Big Brown and then a bunch of goslings chasing their mama, let’s look at the post positions and odds as provided by the folks at Pimlico.
Post 1: Cherry Wine, 20-1
Post 2: Uncle Lino, 20-1
Post 3: Nyquist, 3-5 (!)
Post 4: Awesome Speed, 30-1
Post 5: Exaggerator, 3-1
Post 6: Lani, 30-1
Post 7: Collected, 10-1
Post 8: Laoban, 30-1
Post 9: Abiding Star, 30-1
Post 10: Fellowship, 30-1
Post 11: Stradivari, 8-1
Time to make some sense of this formality called the 141st Preakness Stakes.
Loser: The Bettors
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This is a two-horse race.
Nyquist is unbeaten and smoked a field of 20 horses in the Kentucky Derby. Even if he has an off day, he’ll still be talented enough to win this race.
Exaggerator, routinely Nyquist’s bridesmaid, is the second-best horse and will likely place.
What will that chalkness pay?
Computing…Buffering…Not a lot.
And it’s hard to envision a scenario where those horses are not one-two.
You’re only hope is to place an ambitious superfecta key with Nyquist in first, Exaggerator in second and a mosh pit of bombs in third and fourth.
Or, and this will take considerable RAM, single Nyquist and play around with the multirace wagering of Pick 3s, 4s or the Holy Grail of handicapping, the Pick 6.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
Winners: The Closers
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There’s a lot of speed in this race.
Collected, Uncle Lino, Laoban, Awesome Speed and even Stradivari can be near the pace.
That translates into a hot pace, which, as you know, sets the race up for horses like Exaggerator, Cherry Wine and Fellowship.
Then again, given the weather forecast (a probability of rain), being a closer is a bummer of the highest order. All that mud getting sprayed up on the blaze puts morale in a wicked half-nelson.
Weather pending, the closers could be at an advantage.
Loser: No Choices
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Uncle Lino’s post position hurts him because he no longer has options.
Generally speaking, a jockey can read a race and make the best judgment based on how the race unfolds.
No so with Uncle Lino. Post 2 forces this colt’s hand.
“I would have rather been outside of Nyquist,” trainer Gary Sherlock said after the post draw in a release, “but it is what it is. Being inside, he’s [Uncle Lino] probably going to go to the front now. If he’d drawn outside, we’d have had a few more choices. At least we didn’t get the one.”
Sometimes the paradox of choice nips you. Having no choice but to go to the lead when the track could be muddy might be the greatest blessing in disguise for this colt.
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Winner: Kentucky Derby Horses
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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Derby runners perform well at the Preakness.
Looking at the past 10 runnings of the Preakness, 68 percent of first four finishers of the race ran in the Derby (27 out of 40*).
This year’s Preakness has three Derby runners: Nyquist, Exaggerator and Lani. I wouldn’t be surprise at all if all three of these horses hit the board.
The wild card here is Lani because the other two are about as certain as moon phases to hit the board.
Trainer Makio Matsunaga said in a release, per Paulick Report, “He's not the best switching leads, but in the straight, it was ok,” he said. “We don't have a breeze partner. If he had one here, it would be best, but in this situation, I understand it's difficult to do that. Going by himself, this is the best we could have wanted.”
Horses prep so carefully for the Derby that they are like first-round-of-Wimbledon fresh (some, though not all). Even though these colts never race on two weeks’ rest, wheeling back in 14 days from the Derby to the Preakness is well within the wheelhouse.
And for $1.5 million split a bunch of ways? Why not take a stab if you ran in the Derby? You’re certainly fit enough.
*: BTW, I include Rachel Alexandra in this list. Though she didn’t run in the Derby in 2009, she ran in the Kentucky Oaks the day before.
Loser: The Kentucky Derby Winner
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Why?
Breaking from Post 3 is definitely rad, and having a fun house full of talent and versatility makes him the horse to beat by pole, so why is this bad?
Uncle Lino, breaking Post 2, is a speed horse. Awesome Speed, breaking from Post 4, is a “speed” horse. The quotations explain themselves. He (Awesome Speed) won the local prep race for the Preakness on the lead, but as you know, there are different classes of speed.
Collected (Post 7) and Laoban (Post 8), possess early speed too.
This became a Nyquist sandwich on speed bread.
How Nyquist and jockey Mario Gutierrez handle this is the big question, but the horse and the rider know a thing or two about navigating compromising trips.
“I think we're going to leave there running and just kind of play it by ear,” trainer Doug O’Neill said after the post draw. “If they're not showing a lot of pace, we're going to make it. If it's hot and heavy, [jockey] Mario [Gutierrez] has shown and Nyquist has shown that they can sit off a hot and heavy pace."
John Cherwa of the Los Angeles Times makes a solid point to that end:
"Nyquist seems to dig down when he is engaged by another horse. The seven-furlong San Vicente at Santa Anita is worth watching to see the duel between Nyquist and Exaggerator. Nyquist never blinked no matter how hard Exaggerator was coming at him. It was the race that first sold people on Nyquist.
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The worry is if Nyquist gets eager on the bit too early in the race with so much chaos in front of him.
Winner: The Stakes Rookie
6 of 6What do we make of Stradivari?
This Medaglia d’Oro colt ran off the screen in an allowance race at Keeneland. He ran the nine furlongs in a smoking one minute, 48.64 seconds without his jockey, John Velazquez, asking him.
Watching him run was disgusting. It made you wretch he was so good.
But he hasn’t even run in stakes company yet, let alone a Grade 1 like the Preakness.
His trainer, Todd Pletcher, said in Jonathan Lintner’s Courier-Journal article:
"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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Stradivari breaks from Post 11, the far outside in this field, and he has that tactical speed that a horse like Nyquist possesses. That means he can sit off the flanks of the front-runners and punch the clock at the ⅜ pole.
“The good thing is you can kind of dictate things instead of them being dictated to you when you’re on the outside like that,” Pletcher said in a press release.
He’s the third choice at the morning line despite not running in a stakes race. That gives you an idea of his talent.
Seems like a solid third-place choice or maybe even an upset for the win.
All quotes unless otherwise noted came via press releases sent out by the Maryland Racing Press Office.
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