After staging an upset win in the Kentucky Derby, Authentic will hit the track on Saturday as a +150 favourite on the Preakness Stakes odds at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com.
Trained by the legendary Bob Baffert, Authentic fended off a fierce challenge from race favourite Tiz the Law to earn a narrow victory in this year’s Run for the Races. With his win at Churchill Downs as a +1000 wager, Authentic has now claimed victory in three of four career stakes race appearances going into Saturday’s race at Pimlico Race Course.
Unfortunately, Saturday’s race will not feature a rematch between the top two horses at this year’s Kentucky Derby. The owners of Tiz the Law have elected to skip the Preakness Stakes, instead focusing on their preparation for next month’s Breeders’ Cup Classic. While that move has helped to solidify Authentic’s position atop the odds, the Kentucky-bred colt is expected to face a stiff challenge from Art Collector, who trails as a strong +250 second favourite.
Trained by Thomas Drury Jr., Art Collector was forced to skip the Kentucky Derby due to a hoof injury. However, he has reached the winner’s circle in each of his past five races, capped by dominating victories in both the Blue Grass Stakes and the Ellis Park Derby, and showed no lingering effects of his injury in recent training runs.
Further down the Preakness Stakes odds, another Baffert-trained colt, Thousand Words, sits third at +750, followed by Swiss Skydiver at +1000. After a surprising third-place finish at the Kentucky Derby, Mr Big News joins Ny Traffic at +1400, while Max Player lags at +1600.
Thousand Words is coming off his third career stakes race victory at the Shared Belief Stakes, and reportedly impressed Baffert with a stellar training session last weekend at Churchill Downs. However, the odds of a Baffert-trained horse earning the win in Saturday’s race sit at a lengthy +100 on the Preakness Stakes props at betting sites.
In addition, the record time of 1:53, set by Secretariat at the 1973 Preakness Stakes, is not expected to fall this time around. The odds of the winning race time going OVER 1:55.90 are pegged at a short -190. Authentic came close to staging a wire-to-wire win at the Kentucky Derby, but a wire-to-wire run by this year’s Preakness Stakes winner is a set at just +350.
Elsewhere on the Preakness Stakes betting lines for this weekend, the odds of the winning jockey celebrating as the winning horse crosses the wire are listed at +500, while -250 odds favour the winning horse’s name starting with a vowel.
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