Golden Tempo will skip the Preakness, ending any Triple Crown bid

Horse racing just lost its Triple Crown storyline for 2026. Golden Tempo, the Kentucky Derby winner, will not run in the Preakness Stakes on May 16, s(courier-journal.com) Derby and will point instead to the Belmont Stakes on June 6 at Saratoga. (courier-journal.com)-stakes-decision-cherie-devaux-laurel-park/89926881007/)) ### Why is this such a big deal? The Preakness is the second leg of th(nbcnews.com) sport’s cleanest mainstream story — three races, five weeks, one horse trying to do something rare. Without the Derby winner in Baltimore, the Preakness becomes a big race, but not the race casual fans were waiting for. (baltimoresun.com) ### What did DeVaux actually say? The message was pretty simple — Golden Tempo came out of the(courier-journal.com)less mystery than modern campaigning: protect the horse, skip the squeeze, and aim for the longer target. (msn.com) ### Why does the two-week gap matter so much? Because the Preakness still comes just two weeks after the Derby, and modern trainers mostly hate that setup. Horses now tend to run less ofte(baltimoresun.com)old calendar fighting the modern horse. Basically, the Triple Crown schedule still asks for a 1970s campaign in a 2026 sport. (nytimes.com) ### Was Golden Tempo’s Derby especially taxing? It sure looked that way. Golden Tempo came from dead last to win the 152nd Kentucky Derby, and he did it at 2(msn.com)sk a horse to repeat two weeks later, especially when a fresh Belmont target is sitting there. (nytimes.com) ### Why does Belmont make sense instead? The Belmont this year is on June 6 at Saratoga Race Course, which gives Golden Tempo an extra three weeks beyond the Preakness date. That is a huge difference in this sport. It also happens to b(nytimes.com)mostly about spacing and recovery. (espn.com) ### Is this unusual now? Not really — and that’s the point. Golden Tempo is the second straight Derby winner to skip the Preakness, and reports note it’s happened three times in the last five years. So this is not some shockin(nytimes.com)own timetable asks too much. (nbcnews.com) ### What does this do to the Preakness itself? It leaves the race without its biggest draw. The 2026 Preakness is already being run at Laurel Park rather than Pimlico, and now it also loses the Derby winner who would have carried(espn.com) history-in-progress, not for an excellent race missing its headliner. (courier-journal.com) ### So what’s the bottom line? Golden Tempo’s Derby win was a jolt — a 23-1 upset, DeVa(nbcnews.com)n run. It will be a Belmont freshener, and maybe a sign that the sport’s most famous series no longer fits the way top horses are actually managed. (nytimes.com)