Preakness 2016: Post time, TV schedule, contenders and more

A second chance. That’s what Nyquist represents for owner Paul Reddam, trainer Doug O’Neill and jockey Mario Gutierrez. Four years ago, the trio teamed up with I’ll Have Another to win the first two legs of the Triple Crown before being forced to scratch their colt with an injury the night before the chance to run for history.

Nyquist enters the 1-3/16 mile, $1.5 million Preakness undefeated in the eight races he’s run during his 2- and 3-year-old seasons. He’s won on dry tracks and wet tracks both. He’s beaten fast horses and held off late closers. There’s absolutely no reason to believe he won’t win again at Pimlico.

Sired by Uncle Mo, Nyquist opens with morning line odds at 3-5 and starts at the third position in a field of 11. If he does win, the Belmont is three weeks from now, June 11 in New York.

Exaggerator, trained by Keith Desormeaux with his brother, Kent, as jockey, could derail this entire story in an instant. Keith Desormeaux explained to Daily Racing Form why he believes he has just the horse to do that.

”One of [Exaggerator’s] attributes is a great ability to recover, to bounce back. He’s always been that way. With just the two weeks between these races, I’m hoping that with the massive performance Nyquist turned in, maybe he’ll be knocked out just a tiny bit. My horse is fully fueled; I’m sure of that. Two days out of the Derby he was wide-eyed and ready to go again.

“I’m hoping this will be the most important factor of all - that we’re going to be sitting on our best race and Nyquist will have hit his plateau already.”

The son of Curlin, Exaggerator opens at 3-1 odds and starts in the fifth position.

The intriguing one in the field is Stradivari, who is trained by Todd Pletcher, will start on the outside post and opens at 8-1 odds. With just three starts to his name, none of them graded races, it’s harder to say what to expect. Sired by Medaglia D’oro, the farm he came from had hoped to sell him at auction, but the price came up short of their reserve, DRF wrote in a nice profile. Instead, they chose to race him, and found they had a colt who blew away the competition by distances greater than 10 lengths and with a time as good as Nyquist put up at a similar distance. So they entered him in the Preakness.

“I hope his maturity will enable him to be able to handle it and run beyond his experience,” said Tanya Gunther, who, with father John Gunther, bred the colt and co-owns him with Coolmore. “If he didn’t have as good of a mind, we might be taking a different track.”

There are other contenders, though the rest of the field is given no better than double-figure odds of winning. Trainer Bob Baffert’s Collected is at 10-1. He has three wins in five starts, all coming in graded competition. However, he has never faced top competition on the track.

Forecasts call for rain in the Baltimore area for most of the day, with it expected to fall heavy at times. Up to an inch could fall on the track at Pimlico.