Flatter: Preakness represents the turning of a lot of pages

Laurel, Md.

This Preakness, the one displaced from Pimlico for the first time in 118 years, was one big turning of the page.

There was Napoleon Solo, who looked more like the world beater he resembled as a Grade 1-winning 2-year-old. With his 1 1/4-length triumph Saturday at Laurel Park, he turned the page on a winter of niggles and setbacks.

Napoleon Solo holds on to win Preakness 2026.

There was owner Al Gold, the retired commercial real-estate millionaire from New Jersey who campaigns his horses in the gold-square silks of his Gold Square stable. He turned the page from Cyberknife being his best horse to Napoleon Solo giving him his first win in a U.S. classic.

“We won the Preakness,” Gold said, shouting at the top of his lungs after watching the race on a paddock TV screen. “That was awesome. F-----g awesome.”

There was Chad Summers, a jack-of-all-trades bloodstock agent who added trainer to his résumé nine years ago. He turned the page with a win in the first Triple Crown race of his career.

“We got the victory done on a horse we bought for $40,000,” Summers said, “which I love the most.”

There was jockey Paco López, who had been a combined 0-for-4 in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes. He turned the page with what Summers called a ride of “f-----g brilliance” to change that 0 to a 1.

“My first,” López said. “It’s so exciting. I’m going to celebrate tonight.”

And there was Donna Brothers, whose more than quarter-century of horseback interviews for NBC ended Saturday evening at Laurel Park when she chased down López and Napoleon Solo in the triumphant gallop-out.

“Paco López is a jockey who’s been riding in the United States for nearly 20 years,” Brothers said. “He’s won over 4,000 races, and today he won his first Triple Crown race. Those are the moments I live for, right? That’s why I love this job so much, because it puts me in position to see something like this happen.”

Even as NBC prepares to turn the page and pass the outrider’s microphone this summer to Andie Biancone, it is Brothers who forever will be known as the pioneer. She deservedly has been feted with tributes all week, and she held back tears after she climbed down off local pony Buddy on Saturday evening.

“The way my crew was for the Derby and the Preakness, I can’t even talk about it without crying,” she said. “All the fans, our NBC crew, everybody just gave me the most beautiful send-off. It’s nice to leave a job that you’ve done for 26 years and feel appreciated, right?”

The turning of pages went from the jubilation for Napoleon Solo’s connections to the ambivalence of seeing Brothers hang up her tack to the gloomy harbingers that this Preakness represented.

This may have been the last time the race was run two weeks after the Kentucky Derby. The Triple Crown seems to be like that last reunion of a high-school class whose survivors stopped showing up. Aging and apathy have a way of ruining the party.

“The Triple Crown is hard to win for a reason, and I appreciate the history of it. Horses are definitely different. They’re not built the same. They’re not trained the same as back then. But current times have shown that it can be done with the right horse.”

That was what trainer Cherie DeVaux said three days before she declared that Golden Tempo would not race in the Preakness. She and owners Daisy Phipps Pulito and Vinnie Viola may have finished turning the page that connections for Rich Strike and Sovereignty started.

Then there was Laurel Park. They have been racing on the property since 1911. The current grandstand was christened in 1985, but so much of it has been neglected that it only a portion was used to welcome a capped gathering of 4,800 people Saturday. Some of it was gussied up for the patrons, few and proud. But behind the scenes, it was musty and creaky. It was like putting new clothes over old underwear.

It was an all-too-familiar feeling for Summers, who already had watched another page turn when Napoleon Solo won the Champagne Stakes in October.

“We won the only (Preakness) at Laurel. Nobody will ever take that record away from us. We won the last ever Grade 1 at Aqueduct,” Summers said. “It’s a shame, and it’s a tragedy that racetracks like Aqueduct and Laurel are no longer going to be around, because they’re foundation racetracks.”

Saturday’s Preakness was a one-off, presuming Pimlico is rebuilt enough to stage the 2027 renewal. Laurel is ticketed to be turned into a training track, so the grandstand will be obsolete. Aqueduct will be replaced by a year-round operation at the new Belmont Park, which reopens in September.

“I thought Laurel put on a great show this week,” Summers said. “I thought it was a great crowd, the ones that were here. I wish we could have a little bit more, but it’s a shame that Laurel is going to close, because it’s a wonderful facility. It’s great to train at, and they’ve got plenty of places to celebrate, which we’ll find out in a little bit.”

The next page of the Triple Crown story is a mystery. Unanimous blessing of the next concept is as unlikely as it was that Pretty Boy Miah was going to beat any horses Saturday. If it stays the same, owners and trainers will keep skipping the Preakness the way no-hitters never are thrown by one pitcher anymore. If the calendar changes, purists who make up a loud segment of the sport will not be silenced.

At least Pimlico will be back in the frame next year. And the Belmont Stakes will be back where it belongs, not at an upstate track that supposedly cannot handle its proper 1 1/2-mile distance. And Churchill Downs no doubt will have some say-so about the future of the race that follows its Kentucky Derby bacchanal.

The whole tale is a microcosm of what Brothers said Saturday evening.

“You never can predict truly what the outcome is going to be,” she said.

She was referring to any given race. She could have been referring to racing.

Senior writer Ron Flatter is the semi-retired managing editor who writes occasional columns for Horse Racing Nation.