El Camino Real Derby winner to get Preakness Stakes berth

Golden Gate Fields’ El Camino Real Derby will maintain its spot on the 2019 Kentucky Derby trail, offering qualifying points to its board hitters. But in 2018, race lost its Grade 3 status, ran with half its normal purse money and included just two Triple Crown-nominated horses among its nine entrants.

Track officials intend to reverse those trends beginning with the next edition set for Saturday, Feb. 17.

Announcer Matt Dinerman said Monday the El Camino Real Derby will offer a fees-paid berth to the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes. An official announcement is forthcoming.

Both Golden Gate Fields and Pimlico, home of the Preakness, are operated by The Stronach Group.

“Obviously we’d love to have that graded status if possible,” Dinerman said. “I think we just want to see a strong field for the El Camino Real Derby. We want a larger field size and an incentive for people to come and run here.”

Similarly, The Stronach Group’s Laurel Park in Maryland offers a “Win and You’re In” spot to the Preakness annually through its Federico Tesio Stakes run in April. Now, there’s a West Coast option, too.

“For example,” Dinerman said, “trainers often say to themselves, ‘My horse is a little bit of a late-developing horse. Maybe we should skip the Derby and just go for the Preakness. We think this horse should be better in the time past he Derby, we don’t have to face as big of a field, and it might be a little easier on us.’

“This might be a type of race where you get Bob Baffert to ship a horse up here thinking, ‘He’s my second-tier 3-year-old, but he’s good enough to run in the Preakness.’ To get that type of stock would be really great for this race.”

Paved, a Michael McCarthy-trained filly, won the 2018 El Camino Real Derby at 1 1/8 miles. As in past years, the 2019 edition will pay out qualifying points on a 10-4-2-1 basis to the Top 4 finishers toward the Kentucky Derby.

One Kentucky Derby winner, Charismatic in 1999, used the El Camino Real Derby as a prep race. In all, 27 eventual Derby runners made their way through the Golden Gate feature, with Dance With Fate the most recent of them in 2014.