Pimlico Race Course first opened in 1870, organized and built quickly under the direction of Maryland Governor Oden Bowie, to honor the first great horse to race there, Preakness, Governor Bowie proposed a stakes race for three-year-olds at 1-1/2 miles. The Preakness Stakes, the second jewel of American racing's Triple Crown, was thus inaugurated in 1873, two years before Col. M. Lewis Clark's vision would bring the Kentucky Derby into the world.



The Preakness stayed at Pimlico throughout the 1870s and `80s, but financial problems struck the track and the Maryland Jockey Club, and the race was moved to New York in 1890, when it was run at Morris Park. The Preakness continued to be run there off and on for nearly two decades, with Gravesend race track in Brooklyn hosting the race 15 times.



In 1909, with the Maryland Jockey Club emerging from its financial difficulties, the Preakness came back home and has never left. That year's renewal was contested at one mile. The race was stretched out to 1-1/8 miles in 1911. The race was established at its current length of 1-3/16 miles in 1925. For most of the 1920s and early `30s, the race was contested in early May, before the Kentucky Derby. In 1930, Gallant Fox's Triple Crown-winning effort required him winning the Preakness on May 9 and the Kentucky Derby eight days later. In the mid-1930s, the race was moved to mid-May, putting it one week after the Kentucky Derby. The current spacing of two weeks between races was established by the late 1940s.



The Preakness Stakes is a classic 1 3/16 mile thoroughbred horse race for three-year-olds, held on the third Saturday in May of each year at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland. Colts and geldings carry 126 pounds; fillies 121.



The Preakness is the second and shortest leg in thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing, and almost always attracts the Kentucky Derby winner, some of the other horses that ran in the Derby, and often a few horses that did not start in the Derby. (The phrase "Triple Crown" was not applied to this series of races until the 1930s.) It is followed by the third leg, the Belmont Stakes.



Two years before the Kentucky Derby was run for the first time, Pimlico introduced its new stakes race for three-year-olds, the Preakness, during its first-ever spring race meet in 1873. Governor Bowie had named the then mile and one-half race in honor of Dinner Party Stakes-winner, Preakness.



The first Preakness drew seven starters; John Chamberlain's three-year-old, Survivor, galloped home easily by ten lengths--the largest margin of victory until 2004--winning a purse of $2,050.