The second leg of horse racing's Triple Crown series takes off on Saturday with the 148th running of the Preakness Stakes.
Mage, a surprise 15-1 winner at the Kentucky Derby, will go off from the third post position in what is currently slated to be an eight-horse race.
I wrote a full betting breakdown of the Preakness you can read here, but in this article we're going to focus on potential longshot winners.
Mage is the favorite to don the iconic blanket of black-eyed Susans awarded to the winner of the Preakness with odds of 8-5. He's the only horse that ran in the Derby who will run in the Preakness but has some solid competition.
Post Position – Horse – Odds
1 – National Treasure – 4/1
2 – Chase the Chaos – 50/1
3 – Mage – 8/5
4 – CoffeeWithChris – 20/1
5 – Red Route One – 10/1
6 – Perform – 15/1
7 – Blazing Sevens – 6/1
8 – First Mission – 5/2
Preakness Stakes Longshot Pick
Before we get into the pick, it's important to note that only four horses have won this race with odds of 15-1 or greater. As I mentioned earlier, this is the 148th running of the Preakness, so the odds of an extreme longshot winning this based on history are low.
That being said, I do have one long shot I like and then another horse I'm eyeing outside of the top 3 favorites.
Perform at 15-1 is the only horse I like with what I would consider long odds to win this race.
Red Route One has shorter odds (10-1), but my concern with him is he ran less than a month ago. While he won that race, it's hard for horses to recover so quickly unless they're elite. I don't project Red Route One as an elite-level horse.
Perform, meanwhile, is five weeks removed from his last race and has been getting consistently faster over his last three races. I also like the fact that his grandfather on his dad's side is Curlin, winner of the 2007 Preakness. Not saying that's a tipping point, but pedigree can be important, so it's worth mentioning.
As the same time, I wouldn't break the bank on Perform. Just sprinkle a half unit or less.
Blazing Sevens, who ironically enough is also the grandson of Curlin, is another longish shot I like in this race. He's got the speed to win this race, having ran a mile in 1:37.07 this past October in a win over Verifying, who was in the Derby.
Blazing Sevens hasn't hit that speed since, but with some extra time off it's not out of the question he regains that form. He ran fast in a third place finish at the Kentucky Blue Grass earlier this year and has experience racing against elite competition.
Again, favorites tend to win this race, so I'd lean toward horses with shorter odds and Blazing Sevens has a lot of characteristics of a winning horse in this race.
Odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.