What time will Preakness 2024 begin? Mystik Dan seeks second Triple Crown victory
Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan will be competing against seven other horses on the 149th Preakness Saturday in Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course.
By Stephen Whyno |
May 18, 2024 06:08 PM
Rain was falling at Pimlico Race Course on Saturday hours before Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan goes for back-to-back Triple Crown victories when he takes on seven other horses in the Preakness Stakes.
He’d be the only horse winner of each of The Derby as well as Preakness. He would be the first horse to win both Derby and Preakness in the same year since Justify in the year 2018. It would be an unpredictably historic event in the next month, with the possibility of a Triple Crown on the line at the Belmont Stakes.
Mystik Dan has to beat Bob Baffert’s the Imagination horse, Brad Cox’s Catching Freedom and Chad Brown’s Tuscan Gold which are the main contenders and the Preakness may be conducted on a muddy track and showers are likely to last through the afternoon.
What time will Preakness 2024 begin?
The time of the broadcast is 6:50 p.m. ET but you can view the live coverage on NBC beginning with the broadcast at 4:45 p.m. ET. You can also watch it on Peacock.
Baffert was scheduled to saddle two horses for the race, which was scheduled to kick off at seven p.m. EDT. However, popular morning line winner Muth was scratched throughout the course of the week due to fever. Mystik Dan opened Saturday as the 3-1 favorite. Catching Freedom, and Tuscan Gold each at 7-2, in addition to Imagination 9-2.
“Catching Freedom trained really well going into the Derby,” Mystik Dan’s trainer Kenny McPeek, said this week. “He’s an excellent horse. Also, Bob isn’t going to have a horse without being a great horse, and Chad also has an animal that is coming out of (finishing third behind the winner Catching Freedom during) the Louisiana Derby. That’s not a guarantee.”
It wasn’t an absolute fact it would be McPeek would take Mystik Dan off to Baltimore in a turnaround of two weeks from the colt’s gruelling win by just a nick at the Kentucky Derby. However, it is the third of horses from the race that will be running in the Preakness in 2019, up from just one last year, and another two horses in the 2022 race.
The reluctance of many trainers to race the Derby-Preakness dual that was once the standard for horses racing on the Triple Crown trail, has caused some to question the importance of this middle crown and worries that it’s now the unwelcome stepchild to the Triple Crown series. There are arguments concerning the spacing of races in order to accommodate the modern breeds, which run less often than they did in the past.
It will also be the last Preakness at the old Pimlico Race Course as it is now, with the demolition scheduled to begin early next year. The 150th Preakness race, scheduled for 2025 will continue to be held on the track during the construction phase before it moves into Laurel Park in 2026 and after that returning to a newly constructed Pimlico by 2027.
When will Belmont Stakes? When is Belmont Stakes and where?
The final race of the Triple Crown is taking place on June 8 and it will be the first time that Triple Crown is held it will take place at Saratoga Race Course. Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York because of the renovations taking place on Belmont Park in New York City.
Construction is anticipated to continue until 2025. So it’s possible to see having the Belmont in Saratoga twice in two years.
The racing on the streets of New York is currently happening at Aqueduct in Queens It was host to the Triple Crown finale from 1963-67 The final period that Belmont Park was renovated.
