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BALTIMORE — Listed in the program as the even-money favorite for today’s 138th Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, Kentucky Derby winner Orb probably will be bet down to 4-5 or lower by the time the gates spring open at 6:20 p.m. — and that’s just fine with his trainer, Shug McGaughey.
“I wish all my horses were favorites,” McGaughey is fond of saying. “Because that means they’ve done something to be the favorite.”
The threat of showers doesn’t figure to bother Orb, who romped over a sloppy track at Churchill Downs. But if you’re looking to beat the chalk, there are several straws you can grasp, one of them being that of the 12 odds-on favorites to run in the middle jewel of the Triple Crown since Riva Ridge in 1972, half of them lost. Never mind the fact that of those six losers, including McGaughey’s Easy Goer in 1989, only three were Derby winners; or that three of the six odds-on winners went on to sweep the Triple Crown.
McGaughey, while confident as ever, noted, “I’ve been beaten in a lot of big races. There are a lot of ways to lose, as we all know. Freaky things can happen. We hope he doesn’t get in [traffic] trouble, that he handles the kickback of dirt, that he handles the day.
“If he does all that, it’s going to take a pretty darn good horse to beat him. I think we’re in the position where we can dictate the race and hope he can make his run, and then see what happens.”
What about the fact Orb drew post 1 in the field of nine? The last horse to win the Preakness breaking from the rail was Tabasco Cat in 1994.
“I think eight jocks will be looking toward that inside post,” said trainer Al Stall Jr., whose colt Departing is one of Orb’s most dangerous foes. “That’s just how it is. You want them riding their own horse, but they just can’t help themselves.
“Shug has a target on his back. He wanted it, he’s got it.”
But retired Hall-of-Fame jockey Jerry Bailey, now a color analyst for NBC, doesn’t see that target as a problem.
“I don’t think so,” Bailey said. “Not with his [off-the-pace] style. That’s the best place for him to be. If you’ve got a target on your back and you’re in front, you can be pushed to an extreme early. If you’re a stalker, you’re real easy to find for everybody but the horses that are on the lead.
“But if you’re back, it’s probably, for a favorite, the most anonymous place for him to be. For [another] jockey to find him, they’ve got to look over their shoulder, and you can’t do that too much. You’ve got to pay attention to the horses in front of you, too.”
Though Bailey thinks Orb is “probably three to four lengths the best” in the Preakness, he said anything can happen.
“Like any come-from-behind horse, they’re at the mercy of pace and traffic,” he said. “The pace won’t work to his advantage to the degree that it did in Kentucky, but it should be an honest pace.
“He’ll probably save ground to the first turn and lose it on the second. I guess [the main danger] is not getting sucked up next to a horse that keeps him pinned in behind a wall of horses.”
That horse, Bailey said, could be Mylute, who has a similar running style to Orb and breaks to his outside.
As for the stat that Tabasco Cat was the last horse to win from post 1, of the 18 horses to draw the rail since then, none was the favorite; only three went off at odds under 10-1; and 11 were 20-1 or higher.
One more factoid: Of the last 50 Derby winners to run in the Preakness, 21 (42 percent) got to wear the black-eyed Susans.