By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews — Maryland on the Map
On Wednesday morning, Cherie DeVaux Racing posted a statement to social media announcing that Golden Tempo — the 23-1 longshot who staged one of the most dramatic comebacks in recent Kentucky Derby history just four days earlier — would not be running in the Preakness Stakes on May 16.
The language was gracious. The horse comes first. His health, happiness, and long-term future. Grateful for the support.
It was also the third time in five years that a Derby winner’s connections have delivered some version of that same statement.
Maryland is spending roughly $450 million in public money on the facilities where that race is run. It does not own the race. It does not own the name. It will now pay an annual licensing fee to a Kentucky corporation for the right to use both. It cannot compel anyone to show up.
A Pattern, Not an Exception
The official framing around Derby-winner skips leans heavily on horse welfare — and in individual cases, that framing is not wrong. Golden Tempo ran a grueling come-from-behind race. The two-week turnaround between the Derby and Preakness is the tightest interval in American sports. Trainers who push horses through it risk injury, burnout, and diminished performance.
But Golden Tempo is, by all accounts, completely sound and healthy. DeVaux acknowledged as much in media appearances before Wednesday’s announcement. The decision not to run is a choice, not a medical necessity. And it is a choice that the racing industry’s incentive structure is increasingly pointing connections toward making.
Three forces are driving it.
The first is the schedule itself. The Derby-to-Preakness gap has not changed, but modern training science has. Horses are conditioned differently than they were in the era of Secretariat or Citation. What was survivable — even expected — for a 1970s thoroughbred is now considered an unacceptable risk by trainers who understand equine physiology more precisely than their predecessors did. Two-time Derby winning trainer Doug O’Neill said it plainly last week: trying to squeeze three tough races into five weeks simply is not realistic, given how the sport has evolved.
The second force is money — specifically, stud fees. A Derby winner is a proven commodity the moment he crosses the wire at Churchill Downs. His breeding value is established. Every subsequent race is both an opportunity to enhance that value and a risk of destroying it. A horse who breaks down at the Preakness, or runs poorly after an exhausting Derby effort, loses stud value that no purse check can recover. The Preakness purse is real money. It is not life-changing money for the ownership groups who campaign horses at this level. The calculus is not close.
The third force is precedent. Last year’s Derby winner, Sovereignty, skipped the Preakness, pointed to the Belmont, won, then took the Jim Dandy and Travers Stakes and was named Horse of the Year. That outcome did not just vindicate one trainer’s decision — it became a template. Every future ownership group now has a recent, successful data point showing that skipping the Preakness costs a horse nothing in terms of legacy, earnings, or career trajectory. Each successful skip makes the next one easier to justify.
What Maryland Bought — And What It Didn’t
The Preakness Stakes has been run at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore since 1873. It is one of the oldest continuously operating sporting events in the United States. It is also, this year, not being run at Pimlico — the track is under demolition and reconstruction, and the race has been temporarily relocated to Laurel Park in Anne Arundel County while the rebuild proceeds.
Maryland committed $400 million in public bond financing — repaid through lottery and gaming revenues — to tear down and rebuild Pimlico as a modern, year-round racing and entertainment facility. The state separately purchased Laurel Park for $48.5 million, acquiring the last piece of physical infrastructure for Maryland’s thoroughbred racing industry. Governor Wes Moore framed both moves as a triumph — smart, cost-effective, historic investment in Baltimore’s Park Heights community and the state’s sporting future.
What Maryland did not buy was the Preakness itself.
While Moore was announcing the Laurel acquisition, Churchill Downs Incorporated — the publicly traded Kentucky company that owns and operates the Kentucky Derby — was purchasing the intellectual property rights to the Preakness Stakes and the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes from 1/ST Racing for $85 million. The name. The trademark. The brand. The entire commercial identity of a 154-year-old race that Maryland just spent $450 million to house.
Moore’s public response indicated his administration learned about the CDI deal when everyone else did. Maryland is now the landlord of a building whose primary tenant owns the product that makes the building worth anything — and Maryland pays that tenant an annual licensing fee for the right to use the Preakness name at its own facility.
The leverage picture is not favorable to the state. Before the CDI acquisition, Maryland held significant negotiating power: it owned the venue, controlled the operations, and was the only logical home for the Preakness. Now Churchill Downs owns the brand, and Maryland owns the building. CDI can, at some future point, credibly threaten to move the Preakness to a different venue — perhaps one it owns — if licensing terms become unfavorable. Maryland has no equivalent leverage. It cannot threaten to run a different Triple Crown race.
The conflict of interest runs deeper still. Churchill Downs now owns both the Derby and the Preakness. It has a direct financial interest in protecting Derby horses from the wear and tear of a two-week turnaround, because those horses’ stud value and long-term commercial potential flow partly back through CDI’s ecosystem. The company that owns the race Derby winners keep skipping also profits when those horses stay healthy and go on to successful breeding careers. Maryland’s $450 million investment is downstream of that calculus, and Maryland has no seat at the table where those decisions get made.
The Eighth Consecutive Year
Wednesday’s announcement ensures there will be no Triple Crown winner for the eighth consecutive year. Justify won it in 2018. American Pharoah before him in 2015. In the eleven years since American Pharoah, the sport has produced two Triple Crown winners and is now producing a structural pattern of Derby winners who see no compelling reason to try for a third.
As of right now, none of the 18 horses who ran in the Kentucky Derby will be at Laurel Park on May 16. Not one.
The racing reform conversation is real — there is more momentum than at any recent point toward extending the gap between the Derby and Preakness, a structural change that would require coordination between Pimlico, Churchill Downs, and the New York Racing Association, since moving the Preakness would force the Belmont to move as well. Television rights negotiations set to begin in 2027 may accelerate that conversation.
Maryland’s leverage in those negotiations is the building. Churchill Downs holds everything else.
The rebuilt Pimlico is scheduled to open in 2027. The Preakness is set to return that same year. Between now and then, the state’s $450 million bet depends on a Kentucky corporation choosing to protect a Maryland asset it has no particular obligation to prioritize — and on an industry choosing to reform a schedule that its most powerful participants have learned to profit from ignoring.
Maryland on the Map is an ongoing MDBayNews series on the state’s sporting economy and public investment in major events.
Sources: Cherie DeVaux Racing official statement; NBC News; CBS Sports; CBS News; Yahoo Sports; PressBox; Fox News; Maryland Stadium Authority; Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority; Churchill Downs Incorporated announcement; prior MDBayNews Maryland on the Map series reporting.
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