The Preakness Stakes: An Overview and Some History of One Amazing Race

The Preakness Stakes is a Grade I race for 3 year old horses that is held on the 3rd Saturday in May at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland. It is the second jewel in the "Triple Crown" (The Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes); a series of races for 3 year old horses that is run over the course of May and June each year.

The Preakness was first run two years before the Derby, in 1873, but because it was not continuously run, the Derby is considered the oldest continuously run sporting event here in the United States. The race is named after a horse, Preakness, who won the Dinner Party Stakes on the day that Pimlico first opened in 1870. The first Preakness was won by a horse named "Survivor."

The race has been run at several different lengths, before finally settling on the mile and 3/16ths that is its current distance. It is the shortest of the three races that make up the Triple Crown, and nearly always attracts the winner of the Derby along with a few new entrants. This year, for example, there will be at least three horses from the Derby (including the winner, Street Sense), and a group of horses that either did not make it into the Derby because of earnings, or passed the Derby for other reasons.

The winner of the Preakness will be rewarded with a blanket of Maryland's state flower, the Black Eyed Susan (though the blanket used to be composed of daisies with their centers painted black, for mid-May was too early for the Susans to be blooming), and the most valuable trophy in sports- the Woodlawn Vase. The winner does not get the actual trophy, of course, merely a miniature replica. The original trophy is kept at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The final winner's boon is that as soon as the winner is made official, the weathervane on the old Clubhouse Cupola is painted with the winner's silks, which then remain that color until the following year's race is run.