The Preakness used to be the people’s race. Can it become that again?

It was the plucky middle brother, the one horsepeople not so secretly enjoyed the most.

It did not carry the fashion-show sheen or the excruciating tension of the Kentucky Derby. It lacked the gravitas of the Belmont Stakes when a Triple Crown was on the line.

But the Preakness Stakes was the people’s race — the one where the sport’s elite could pal around as neighbors in the same barn located two turns off Northern Parkway, where everyday Baltimoreans could get up close to million-dollar thoroughbreds before partying the afternoon away on a muddy infield.

On the third Saturday of May, homely Pimlico Race Course provided a populist stage on which the newly minted Kentucky Derby champion might gallop into history.

The 2026 Preakness will be something else entirely. This was always going to be a strange year, with Maryland’s signature race displaced to Laurel Park as a $400 million Pimlico rebuild rumbles forward.

The crowd, which peaked at an announced 140,327 in 2017, will be capped at about 4,800. There will be no infield party as 1/ST Racing (aka The Stronach Group) takes its final bow operating the second jewel of the Triple Crown.

Of more concern to the broader racing audience will be the absence of Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo and his pioneering trainer, Cherie DeVaux. This marks the third time in five years the Derby winner will skip the Preakness without an injury excuse, and DeVaux’s decision has brought new urgency to calls for a more spaced-out Triple Crown schedule.

Without major change, racing analysts warn, the sport’s most important showcase will effectively die. The Preakness has been the first casualty in that gloomy process, its field inexorably diminishing in quality and star power. Television viewership dropped 16% last year.

“It’s so frustrating, because it’s so patently obvious that the Triple Crown is broken,” said NBC analyst Randy Moss, who will help broadcast this year’s Preakness. “The Triple Crown as an entity that attracts the best horses for each race, as it was designed to be … that entire concept died.”

It’s so frustrating, because it’s so patently obvious that the Triple Crown is broken. The Triple Crown as an entity that attracts the best horses for each race, as it was designed to be … that entire concept died.”

Randy Moss, NBC analyst

Between the Preakness’ lesser economic punch (the race has run in the red for years, according to its operators), its decline as a pure sporting spectacle and the wait to return to its reimagined Baltimore home, this is a year of painful transition for one of the state’s bedrock events.

Is the Preakness brand in peril?

Not so fast, said Bill Knauf, president of the nonprofit Maryland Jockey Club, which operates thoroughbred racing in the state and will take over the Preakness after this year’s race.

“I think there is just a ton of potential growth,” Knauf said from his office on the ground floor of Laurel Park, as preparations for the Preakness swirled outside. “I would love to see a fun, energetic, excited crowd on the infield, within the context of a modern event setup. If it’s food trucks or local bands, I think there’s a whole component that we can regrow there. I think that will reenergize the average patron who might not be able to afford the hospitality tickets. I think that’s what we want to bring back.”

To that end, he’s dreaming up plans for 2027 and beyond with an event manager who helps stage Formula One races and other premium spectacles. Knauf hopes the full opening of a new Pimlico in 2028 (the grandstand won’t be ready next year) will be a big bang for the Preakness’ next era.

“There’s a lot of potential growth there, and I think, naturally, the building will fuel a lot of that,” he said. “You were looking at a condemned building from the infield. Now you’re going to be looking at this beautiful structure with green space and box seating.”

As Knauf suggested, there are other reasons to think the Preakness has potential to rebound.

With the race’s NBC media contract up after this year, multiple suitors, including NBC, Fox and several streamers, are bidding for the next deal. That could be the impetus for a long-discussed change to the Triple Crown schedule, especially if Fox, which broadcasts the Belmont Stakes and thus holds sway with the New York Racing Association, secures the rights.

Beyond that, another major player entered the fray last month when Churchill Downs Inc., which operates the Kentucky Derby, announced plans to purchase the intellectual property rights to the Preakness for $85 million from 1/ST Racing. Questions remain around that deal, because the state has 60 days to match it, but if Churchill enters the Preakness business, with financial incentive to pump up the race’s annual betting handle, the event would be backed by one of the most powerful entities in racing.

On an earnings call last month, Churchill CEO Bill Carstanjen said he hopes to “help them build back to their former glory.”

Knauf acknowledged a sense among stakeholders that the Preakness needs to get back to what made it special. That doesn’t necessarily mean a flashback to 20 years ago, when patrons paid neighborhood children to wheel in coolers overflowing with beer and drunkards raced atop portable toilets.

But Maryland officials have long grumbled that 1/ST CEO Belinda Stronach lost the thread in trying to present the Preakness as an entertainment spectacle, with expensive concert acts (Bruno Mars, Jack Harlow, Megan Thee Stallion) almost overshadowing the race. Annual losses hit $3 million in 2022 and $2 million in 2023. An event long credited with upholding the state’s venerable racing industry instead contributed to its dimming outlook.

No one — not Maryland officials, not NBC broadcasters, not leading horsepeople — seems overly concerned that a diminished spectacle this year at Laurel will threaten the Preakness’ long-term prestige.

Smaller audience aside, Knauf hopes patrons will enjoy the one-off at Laurel as a “unique novelty.” Same for 2027, presumably the one time a Preakness will be run at Pimlico with no permanent seating.

But the ongoing drama around the Triple Crown calendar does present an existential threat.

For decades, leading trainers such as the late D. Wayne Lukas and Bob Baffert (with 14 Preakness wins between them) pushed back against calls for a revamped schedule, saying the tradition of three races in five weeks presented an appropriately grueling test for any 3-year-old that might join the exclusive club of 13 Triple Crown winners.

But ensuing generations of horsepeople — Todd Pletcher, Brad Cox, now DeVaux — have made it clear they are not comfortable running their most prized horses on two weeks’ rest. Bill Mott, who opted not to bring Sovereignty to Pimlico last year between impressive victories in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes, has become the most quoted spokesman for this Preakness skepticism. Asked if his Derby contender, Chief Wallabee, would be making the trip to Maryland this year, Mott replied: “Nobody talks about the Preakness.”

Harsh but all too true. The most precocious 3-year-olds aim for the Kentucky Derby, and there’s hardly any remaining overlap between its field and that of the Preakness. The second jewel of the Triple Crown has instead become a target for trainers, such as Chad Brown, who see a chance to snag a $2 million classic win with horses that might not have been ready to thrive in the Derby.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” said Brown, a two-time Preakness winner, when asked if the race’s prestige is in jeopardy. “As far as I’m concerned, year to year, as a trainer of a lot of nice horses, it’s not clear to me that the Preakness is going to be an easy race because of the dwindling participation from Derby runners. I don’t go into the season saying, ‘Wow, this horse is a cut below the Derby horses; let me focus on the Preakness.’ It’s been more of a timing issue. But I feel like, certainly, there has to be some change in the perception of the race from at least some portion of certain groups, whether it’s just the casual fans or industry insiders. Now you have two Derby winners in a row passing the race, so undoubtedly, there’s got to be some view of that.”

Laurel-based trainer Brittany Russell is delighted she’ll saddle her first Preakness runner, Taj Mahal, at a track that has “given us everything.” But she too would prefer a world in which the Derby winner always proceeds to Maryland.

“I mean, it is unfortunate,” Russell said. “It’s hard for trainers to wheel a horse back in two weeks now. It’s different. They’re protecting their horses. Everybody would’ve loved to see the Derby winner; there’s no doubt about that. Moving forward I don’t know what’s going to happen, but times have changed.”

Stronach officials have pushed for more time between the Derby and Preakness only to run into an unbudging New York Racing Association uninterested in pushing the Belmont deeper into June. Belmont Stakes day has benefited in some ways from the weakening of the Preakness, with fields bolstered by refreshed Derby contenders.

The downside is equally apparent; if every Derby winner skips the Preakness, the possibility of a Triple Crown — still the Belmont’s greatest selling point — vanishes. With Golden Tempo taking a pass, this will be the eighth straight year with no Triple Crown on the line in New York.

As a result, more and more trainers are calling for change. Lukas said it was time to reconsider the Triple Crown before he died last June. Baffert has softened his stance.

“I’ve always been against changing the time frame of the races,” Brown said, noting his attachment to Triple Crown history. “I’ve been more open to it in recent years. … It’s not sustainable. I don’t have a good time frame on it, and that’s just an opinion. Within three years is it not sustainable? Ten years? Twenty years? I don’t know, but certainly, you can’t ignore the trend. That’s the way we’re headed.”

A calendar change before next year’s races no longer seems far-fetched, though muted optimists such as Moss say a three-week break between Derby and Preakness would only do so much to mollify trainers who prefer four- and five-week rests for their stars.

The NBC analyst takes greater hope from the possible involvement of Churchill, which has built the Derby into an event seemingly impervious to the headwinds confronting a declining racing industry in almost every other corner of the country.

Churchill had essentially stayed out of the calendar standoff between New York and Maryland, but with the value of its licensing deal for the Preakness dependent on annual betting revenue, the Kentucky-based company would have direct motivation to make the second jewel of the Triple Crown as robust as possible.

“The Churchill Downs people, I think their opinion does and should carry a lot of weight,” Moss said. “Churchill Downs believes the Triple Crown needs to be modified, and they are very aggressive in the realm of protecting their financial investments. The combined forces of Churchill Downs and Maryland would have a much greater chance of success in getting the New York Racing Association to finally move the Belmont where it needs to be placed.”

Imagine a world in which the Preakness was still three weeks away. Fans thrilled by Golden Tempo’s charge to the wire, by DeVaux becoming the first female trainer to win the Derby, would have that time to anticipate a rematch between the champ and runner-up Renegade, between the great riding brothers José and Irad Ortiz. We might not be back to the 1970s and 1980s, when Triple Crown rivalries ranked among the best in sport, but that history would not feel quite so distant.

“The Preakness is supposed to be a Kentucky Derby rematch,” Moss said. “It’s supposed to be, and historically has been, the race that capitalizes on the momentum of the Kentucky Derby and keeps the ball rolling. Unfortunately, it’s not that way anymore.”

Can it come back?

Churchill Downs is betting as much. “We think it has tremendous potential, a tremendous history, and as it unfolds we are certainly available to the state and happy to work with the state to help them figure out how best to transition that property into something great like it’s been in the past,” Carstanjen said.

Gov. Wes Moore is also all in, having pushed the legislature to issue $400 million in bonds to raze and rebuild Pimlico into a suitable home (not just for the Preakness but for the state’s thoroughbred industry at large) for decades to come.

“I don’t think it’s being permanently damaged,” Moss said of a race he’s attended for more than 40 years. “I think there’s enough history that, as soon as we get back to a proper Triple Crown situation, it will be every bit as prestigious as it’s ever been.”