EquiSpace: Preakness 138: The Day in Pictures

Oxbow wins the Preakness

There's your gate-to-wire winner, Oxbow, taking the 138th edition of the Preakness at Pimlico Race Course. I moved around most of the morning spending time in and around Old Hilltop trying to snap a few pictures for the 'ole blog. I was live blogging from mid-afternoon through the Dixie for The News and luckily that was during the heavy misting. My recap for The News for this morning's paper can be found here.

It was a fun, but exhausting weekend in Baltimore, my third year covering the race and I watched from the winner's circle for the first time instead of the perch up in the press box. One thing I saw before the race was the trouble that Govenor Charlie's handlers were having with his bridle when taking him out to the track. More than one F-bomb was being thrown at the person who was responsible for securing it in the paddock. They struggled for a good 90 seconds trying to get it on and the horse was none too happy about it. You can see it in a picture I captured below.

While the pace of the race was dawdling through the six furlong mark, the big surprise to me was that no one challenged Oxbow in the early going to keep him honest. Maybe they were just freaked by the hot pace of the Derby and the havoc it presented. I didn't have Oxbow, I liked him on the Triple Crown trail based on his pedigree to go long (probably one of the top two), but just got spooked by his inability to win and to sometimes find trouble. Oh well, that's why they call it gambling.

Here are some pictures (click to enlarge) from Saturday's travels...