If the Preakness Stakes returns to Pimlico Race Course in 2027 as anticipated, Napoleon Solo will be the only horse to win the Preakness at Laurel Park.
That isn’t lost on Napoleon Solo trainer Chad Summers.
“You know those bars that have those trivia contests on random Wednesdays? At some point, this will be a trivia question and we’ll be the answer,” Summers said on Glenn Clark Radio May 18.
Preakness 151 was held at Laurel with Pimlico in the process of being rebuilt. As part of the project, Laurel will be turned into a training facility for an estimated 1,100 horses. Those horses will be shipped to Pimlico, which will become a “ship-in” race track, as outlined in PressBox’s April cover story.
Though the Preakness crowd was limited to 4,800, Summers enjoyed his time at Laurel Park, calling it a “beautiful facility” and encouraged horse racing fans to check it out at some point before the end of the year. Travers Day falls on Aug. 29, while Jim McKay Maryland Million Day falls on Oct. 24.
“They’ve got a sports bar over there that’s tremendous. They’ve got TVs all over the place,” Summers said. “You don’t have to just watch Laurel. You can watch some of the ballgames or some of the other racetracks. The food is really, really good for a racetrack. I really highly recommend it for anyone that hasn’t been to Laurel. Look, the Preakness might not be there, but they’re still running really, really good horse races there the rest of the year.”
Preakness 151 marked the first Triple Crown victory of Summers’ career. It comes at a time when the future of the Triple Crown is up in the air. Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo didn’t run in this year’s Preakness, part of a recent trend of Derby horses not competing in the Preakness on two weeks rest.
In recent decades, the Triple Crown has been a three-races-in-five-weeks test, but if Derby winners aren’t going to run in the Preakness, should the Preakness and Belmont Stakes be pushed back to bring the Triple Crown back into play?
“It’s just a new generation, a new era. [Horses aren’t] bred as durable as they were before. They’re bred more for speed,” Summers said. “When you’re bred for speed, sometimes you need a little bit more time to recover because you’re not as much as a heavy horse. You’re more of a lighter-framed and -bodied horse. When you’re made differently, you recover differently. I think that’s why a lot of times people need that little bit of extra time of recovery to get to that next stage. That’s the situation we’re in right now.”
Summers said a month between the Derby and Preakness would be beneficial in making the Triple Crown prestigious again, but allowed that other issues related to the racing calendar might present themselves with a new Triple Crown schedule.
“It’s something we need to discuss in the industry. Unfortunately, the tracks don’t talk to each other enough. The horsemen don’t talk to each other enough,” Summers said. “We need a commissioner of racing in the worst way. You see it in every other sport. We don’t have it here. We don’t have a central body, so things get mixed and lost in translation. … We shoot ourselves in the foot. It’s to the detriment of everybody and the benefit of nobody. Hopefully at some point we can all get together in the industry and rally around.”
For more from Summers, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Bill Denver/Equi-Photo