Preakness 2025: Revised plan sends Heart of Honor to U.S.

Baltimore

Jamie Osborne is hoping to go one better with Heart of Honor in Preakness 2025 than he did 10 1/2 years ago with Toast of New York in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Back in 2014 at Santa Anita, Toast of New York had the good fortune of starting outside eventual winner Bayern. He was unaffected by the leftward start by front-running Bayern, and he finished a stalking second at 18-1 odds.

Video: Hard-core handicapping of Preakness 2025.

Now Osborne, who is based in England, brings Heart of Honor to Pimlico in hopes of pulling off what the morning line says would be a 12-1 upset Saturday in a U.S. Triple Crown race.

But why the Preakness? The 50 points Heart of Honor earned by finishing second in the Grade 2 UAE Derby on April 5 earned him an invitation to the Kentucky Derby. Osborne took a pass.

“After the UAE Derby, realistically, the Kentucky Derby was going to be too soon for the horse,” Osborne said Thursday morning outside the quarantine barn at Pimlico. “Those extra couple of weeks, I think we’ve needed them.”

It was not just about the timing. The Preakness will be plenty noisy Saturday, but it will have only nine horses rather than the big field at Churchill Downs nearly two weeks ago. Baltimore may be an easier step then for a colt who has raced mostly in the comparative quiet of Dubai.

“Two different tests,” Osborne said. “The Derby test obviously with 20 runners (actually 19) and everything, this seemed to make a bit more sense with a smaller field and giving us a little bit more time between the races.”

Coming to America actually was not the original plan when Osborne bought then 2-year-old Heart of Honor on behalf of Jim and Claire Bryce, a U.K. real-estate couple, for $172,341.

“Basically, he was bought to race on the dirt in the UAE,” Osborne said. “He had a good season, a good winter out there. He won two of his five races, and he was arguably an unlucky second in the other three. We thought when we finished that season that maybe he would need a break. But we got him home, and all the signs were that he didn’t need a break. He was thriving. He looked great. He was very fresh.”

With the Dubai season at an end, and with Heart of Honor clearly not wanting to start a vacation from racing, the question was what to do with him in England.

“Obviously he’s an out-and-out dirt horse,” Osborne said of the 3-year-old dark bay by Honor A. P. out of Scat Daddy mare Ruby Love. “Having an out-and-out dirt horse in the U.K. is a bit pointless, because there’s no dirt racing. We were never going to run him in Europe, so as we felt he didn’t need a break, we thought why not have a go? Let’s put him on the plane.”

Osborne admitted the journey from England to Baltimore was not the easiest for Heart of Honor, what with a quarantine stop in between at Churchill Downs. But under the circumstances, he said, everything went smoothly enough.

“It’s not a perfect preparation when you’re expecting a horse to go and run his best race when he’s spent so much time on vans and planes in the last week,” Osborne said. “But he’s a good brain to do it. He eats well. He drinks well. He seems to take what we’re throwing at him well. If you’ve seen him on the track the last few days, he’s very fresh. It doesn’t seem to have taken the edge off him at all.”

Toast of New York won the 2014 UAE Derby with England jockey Jamie Spencer, who also rode in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Osborne is doubling down on a different expression of his loyalty this year, going with a jockey who was only 12 years old when Toast of New York raced at Santa Anita. The math says Saffie Osborne is 23 now. Genetics say she is Jamie Osborne’s daughter.

“She’s our rider,” the trainer-father said. “It’s more fun doing it with her. Jim and Claire, ... they’ve seen Saffie growing up. It wouldn’t cross their mind to take her off him. Maybe you could argue we’d be better off with somebody that understood the track a bit better and had more experience on dirt, but she knows the horse. She’s ridden him the last couple of starts, and doing it with Saffie is all part of what we do.”

Figuring that his daughter will rate Heart of Honor in midpack Saturday, Osborne said what may be an unthinkable outcome for so many handicappers is something which crossed his mind when he put Saffie’s name in ink on the Preakness entry.

“If the unbelievable happened, and (Heart of Honor) were to win a Preakness, but Saffie was sitting at home, it would be a bit empty,” he said. “She’d sack me as her father, I would imagine.”