FanHouse Preakness

NEW YORK -- Chip Woolley sometimes looks like he wants to dart out of a room as fast as he can. He fidgets with his welterweight-sized belt buckle, adjusts his 10-gallon black hat, scuffs his cowboy boats on the marble floor and nervously smoothes the mustache that frames his mouth like parentheses. Put the cowboy on the track, training horses and bucking giant odds, and Woolley's as calm as a yogi.

The incredible filly Rachel Alexandra won the 134th running of the Preakness Stakes Saturday at Pimlico, becoming the first female horse to win the Preakness since 1924.

If you've paid close attention to Calvin Borel, like Tuesday night when he was a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, you've probably noticed that he doesn't have many teeth. America's favorite jockey has lost most of them over the years from falls, or from his face slamming into the back of horses' necks, or from erosion caused by stomach acid after purposely regurgitating countless meals to keep his weight around 110 pounds.

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Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird, the 50-1 long shot who flew away from the field down the stretch, will attempt to take the next step toward the Triple Crown.

If you search YouTube for "Preakness infield," you'll find all sorts of videos like this one, in which a guy pukes his guts out while a girl mocks him:

The Preakness infield has virtually nothing to do with horse racing and much to do with binge drinking and the flashing of breasts. Everything about it runs contrary to the aristocratic "Sport of Kings" image that the powers that be in horse racing try to project.

And that's fine, if that's what the consenting adults who go to the Preakness infield are looking for. But as Andrew Ratner of the Baltimore Sun writes (in a column in which he quotes me), the age of cell phone cameras and blogs and YouTube has changed the Preakness infield because it can no longer be forgotten with a couple of aspirin the next morning. You might do things in the Preakness infield that you wouldn't do in front of your co-workers, only to have your co-workers see you doing those things online.

Strangely, though, I don't think there's any evidence at all that the behavior of the people in the Preakness infield has changed. I guess that afternoon of fun is worth it.

Big Brown did it again today, racing to a dominant victory at the 133rd running of the Preakness Stakes and getting one step away from becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years.

Big Brown went off as a huge favorite at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, with the odds reaching an amazing 1-5 as just about everyone bet on the favorite to win. It was justified. Big Brown cruised early and galloped away late, absolutely obliterating the field down the stretch. Although Gayego got off to a good start and had an early lead, there was never a point at which Big Brown appeared to be in any trouble.

He ultimately won by more than five lengths. Macho Again placed and Icabad Crane showed.

Jockey Kent Desormeaux and trainer Rick Dutrow have a great horse, a horse that will now be favored to win a place as one of the greatest in history at the Belmont.

On Saturday afternoon NBC showed the Ottawa Senators-Buffalo Sabres NHL playoff game. At least, it showed most of the game. But when Ottawa-Buffalo went into overtime, NBC didn't go with it, instead shifting hockey over to Versus and showing the pre-race festivities at the Preakness. (NBC's Buffalo affiliate stayed with the Sabres game.)

As you'd expect, hockey fans who don't live in Upstate New York and don't have Versus are furious. But NBC made the right decision for one simple reason: A lot more NBC viewers care about the Preakness than the NHL playoffs. As the Globe and Mail reports:

In terms of audiences, there's a huge gulf between viewership for an NHL playoff game, even one as important as Saturday's, and a major U.S. event such as the Preakness.

NBC will earn a rating of about 5 (percentage of U.S. households tuned in) for its Preakness telecast. The NHL playoffs on NBC is producing an average rating of less than 1.5.

I personally would rather watch overtime of an NHL playoff game than the quasi-celebrities NBC gives us before big races, but I'm in the minority. Horse racing is more popular in the United States than hockey, and as long as that's the case, the networks should give the viewers what they want.

Hose racing will go without a Triple Crown once again after Curlin beat Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense by a nose to win a thrilling Preakness.

It was a wild race, with Street Sense seeming to have it locked up until the final paces of the stretch run. But Curlin took a surprising late charge to pull off the come-from-behind victory.

Curlin, who finished third in the Kentucky Derby, is a relatively inexperienced horse who won his first three races by a combined 28 1/2 lengths. Although the lack of a Triple Crown contender makes the Belmont slightly less interesting, Curlin and Street Sense going head-to-head for the third time makes it a race worth seeing.

Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated calls the Preakness "the quintessential look-back, look-ahead sporting event," and I think that's about right. We're less than 24 hours away from the Preakness, and the only thing anyone seems to be talking about is this: Will Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense win? And if so, will he win the Belmont?

It's a strange thing about horse racing, that it's almost completely ignored in the sports media except for this brief moment each year when we all ask if there's going to be a Triple Crown winner. If Street Sense loses tomorrow, we're supposed to stop caring about horse racing until next year. If he wins, we're supposed to keep caring about horse racing until the Belmont.

Other than Street Sense, the story of tomorrow's race might be the weather: With rain in the forecast for Baltimore, we're likely to see a muddy track. Street Sense is one of only three horses in tomorrow's race with any experience in mud, having finished third in the Arlington Washington Breeders' Cup last year.