2016 Preakness facts:

When:  Saturday, May 21, 2016

Post time:  6:45 p.m. Saturday at Pimlico, Baltimore MD

Distance: 1 3/16 miles

Purse: $1.5 million

TV: NBC

NBC Preakness Stakes Pre-Show
Saturday, May 21
2:30pm

NBC Preakness Stakes Broadcast
Saturday, May 21
5:00pm

Livestream:  NBC Sports Live Extra

Radio: Horse Racing Radio Network

Two years before the Kentucky Derby was run for the first time, Pimlico introduced its new stakes race for three-year-olds, the Preakness, during its first-ever spring race meet in 1873. Former Maryland governor Oden Bowie named the then mile and one-half (2.41 km) race in honor of the colt Preakness from Milton Holbrook Sanford’s Preakness Stables in Preakness, Wayne Township, New Jersey, who won the Dinner Party Stakes on the day Pimlico opened (October 25, 1870). The New Jersey name was said to have come from the Native American name Pra-qua-les (“Quail Woods“) for the area. After Preakness won the Dinner Party Stakes, his jockey, Billy Hayward, untied a silk bag of gold coins that hung from a wire stretched across the track from the judges’ stand. This was the supposed way that the “wire” at the finish line was introduced and how the awarding of “purse” money came to be. In reality, the term “purse”, meaning prize money, had been in use for well over a century.  (Wikipedia)

Preakness

The first Preakness, held on May 27, 1873, drew seven starters. John Chamberlain’s three-year-old, Survivor, collected the $2,050 winning purse by galloping home easily by 10 lengths. This was the largest margin of victory until 2004, when Smarty Jones won by 11 1/2 lengths.

The Lineup:

In Baltimore, a sloppy track is expected. The National Weather Service forecast Friday night called for a 100 percent chance of rain beginning early Saturday in the Baltimore area and continuing throughout the day, with as much as one inch possible in some areas. Temperatures are expected to be in the mid- to upper 50s with wind gusts up to 20 mph.

2015 Preakness was also a sloppy track: