THE PREAKNESS can't match the Kentucky Derby's prominence or importance, but it often exhibits more common sense.
After the sheer madness of the Derby and its once-in-a-lifetime conditions - there were 156,000 fans cheering for 20 horses this year - the Triple Crown usually comes to Baltimore, exhales and becomes more logical.
But that's in a normal year, and the 2005 Triple Crown lost any shot at normality when Giacomo won the Derby at Churchill Downs on May 7.
The California horse's 50-1 victory means the Preakness is also liable to make less sense than usual this year.
"There could easily be another long-shot winner. That wouldn't surprise me at all," jockey Jerry Bailey, who will ride High Fly, said yesterday.
When a Derby winner has credentials as unimposing as Giacomo's (he has won only two of eight career races), more people are bound to line up and try to beat him in the Preakness. It's no coincidence the starting gate for the race will be full today with 14 horses for the first time in 13 years.
The full field means more choking, Derby-like traffic conditions could prevail on Pimlico's tight racing strip, potentially transforming the race from sensible to unpredictable, and entirely up for grabs.
"Fourteen horses here is like 20 at Churchill Downs," Bailey said. "A couple of good horses could easily get caught up in traffic on the second turn."
It might be a good time to look farther down the form sheets at the horses no one is talking about. Throwing Scrappy T into your $2 superfecta box never made more sense.
You know it's a weird Triple Crown season when the Derby winner is relegated to the fourth betting choice on the Preakness morning line, barely ahead of a horse that finished 19 places behind him in Louisville.
It's true. Giacomo is 6-1, and High Limit, trained by Bobby Frankel, is 12-1 after finishing behind everyone in the Derby.
How could the Preakness top Giacomo's Derby triumph for sheer improbability? A worst-to-first turnaround by High Limit would come close, and with Frankel training and Edgar Prado riding, it could happen.
Frankel isn't disguising his game plan for today, having admitted he wants his front-running horse to take the lead early and never let it go.
"Frankel wants [the lead], no question," Bailey said. "That doesn't mean he's going to get it."
