Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan isn’t the favorite for the Preakness. See field with odds.

Muth, the Bob Baffert trainee who won the Arkansas Derby in his last effort, is the 8-5 morning line favorite for Saturday’s 149th running of the Grade 1, $2 million Preakness Stakes.

A field of nine horses will go 1 3/16 miles on the dirt track Saturday at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore in the middle leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown. Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan is the second choice on the morning line with 5-2 odds.

Post time for the Preakness Stakes is 7:01 p.m. Saturday.

Muth will start from the fourth post position and Mystik Dan is next door in five after Monday evening’s post-position draw.

Here are the key storylines to note ahead of the race, including Mystik Dan’s bid for a Triple Crown and Bob Baffert’s chances of extending his record number of Preakness victories.

Mystik Dan to run in Preakness Stakes after Kentucky Derby win

Following his rail-running triumph in the Kentucky Derby on May 4, Mystik Dan arrived at Pimlico on Sunday afternoon and worked over a sealed muddy racetrack Monday morning.

Ridden by Brian Hernandez Jr. — who again has the mount Saturday — and trained by Lexington’s Kenny McPeek, Mystik Dan won a historic 150th running of the Run for the Roses at 18-1 odds.

In addition to giving both Hernandez and McPeek their first Derby victories, Mystik Dan capped a major weekend for the jockey-trainer duo. Both men also teamed up to win the 150th Kentucky Oaks with the filly Thorpedo Anna.

Mystik Dan — who wasn’t confirmed to be running in the Preakness until last weekend — is the first Kentucky Derby winner since 2012 to compete in the Preakness Stakes and not be the morning line favorite for the race.

That last happened in 2012 when Bodemeister was picked ahead of I’ll Have Another, who went on to win the Preakness before falling short of the Triple Crown by being scratched prior to the Belmont Stakes.

The last horse to win both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes in the same year was Justify in 2018 as part of his Triple Crown campaign.

After winning the Kentucky Derby from post position 3 — which is on the extreme inside of the 20-horse Derby field — Mystik Dan will be smack in the middle of the action Saturday, with four horses to both his inside and outside.

Bob Baffert returns after sitting out another Kentucky Derby

After missing out on a third straight Kentucky Derby due to his suspension from Churchill Downs, Baffert returns to the Triple Crown scene with a pair of runners in this year’s Preakness Stakes.

Muth, the morning line favorite, is considered one of the best horses in this year’s 3-year-old class.

With a career record of 4-2-0 across six starts, Muth has produced wins in the Arkansas Derby (a key Kentucky Derby prep race) and the American Pharoah Stakes. Muth was second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last year.

Muth will be ridden in the Preakness by Juan Hernandez, who has been in the saddle for all six of his starts.

Ahead of the Derby, Muth was at the center of last-minute litigation from owner Amr Zedan (Zedan Racing Stables) as he filed a lawsuit against Churchill Downs to try and gain Muth entry to the Derby. That attempt was unsuccessful.

Baffert is also saddling Imagination (post position 9 and 6-1 odds) in the Preakness. Imagination is 2-4-0 in six career starts and will be ridden for the third straight time by jockey Frankie Dettori. In his last race, Imagination ran second and was beaten by a neck by Stronghold in the Santa Anita Derby.

Baffert has won the Preakness Stakes a record eight times, including last year with National Treasure.

D. Wayne Lukas to run two horses in Preakness

Three horses that competed in the Kentucky Derby will also run in this year’s Preakness.

In addition to Mystik Dan, both Catching Freedom (post position 3 and 6-1 odds) and Just Steel (post position 7 and 15-1 odds) are running it back off a two-week break.

Catching Freedom finished fourth in the Derby and was the first horse not involved in the three-way photo finish to hit the line. This is only the second time trainer Brad Cox will have a runner in the Preakness Stakes: He finished third with Owendale and fourth with Warrior’s Charge, both in the 2019 race.

Catching Freedom is 3-0-1 in six career starts.

Just Steel, trained by 88-year old D. Wayne Lukas, finished second in the Arkansas Derby in late March, behind Muth. Just Steel then ran 17th in the Kentucky Derby after being part of the early, pace-setting lead.

Lukas also has Seize the Grey (post position 6 and 15-1 odds) in the field after that horse scored a win on the Derby undercard in the Pat Day Mile.

Lukas is competing in his 32nd all-time Preakness Stakes. He’s won the race six times with Codex (1980), Tank’s Prospect (1985), Tabasco Cat (1994), Timber Country (1995), Charismatic (1999) and Oxbow (2013).

According to Equibase, Lukas has a record of 27-20-20 from 156 starts at Pimlico.

Just Steel and Seize the Grey will bring Lukas’ total number of Preakness starters to 48, and this will be the 14th time he has multiple horses in the field.

Other Preakness Stakes runners include a Chad Brown horse

The other Preakness runners are Mugatu, Uncle Heavy and Tuscan Gold.

Mugatu (post position 1 and 20-1 odds) owns a career record of 1-1-3 from 12 starts. He last ran fifth in the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland, which marked just his third start on dirt.

Mugatu was an also-eligible entry for the Kentucky Derby but didn’t draw into the field.

Uncle Heavy (post position 2 and 20-1 odds) owns a career record of 3-0-0 from five starts. He won the Withers Stakes in February and ran fifth in the Wood Memorial in April, both at Aqueduct in New York.

A Pennsylvania-bred horse, Uncle Heavy will be the first Preakness starter for 67-year-old trainer Butch Reid Jr.

Tuscan Gold (post position 8 and 8-1 odds) owns a career record of 1-0-1 from three career starts, making him the least experienced of any horse in the Preakness field. Trainer Chad Brown has two Preakness wins with Cloud Computing (2017) and Early Voting (2022), and Tuscan Gold will be his seventh Preakness Stakes starter.

Tuscan Gold’s jockey, Tyler Gaffalione, received a $2,500 fine from the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission’s Board of Stewards last week for touching a rival horse with his left hand while nearing the finish of the Kentucky Derby.

Gaffalione was aboard Sierra Leone for the Derby and made contact with Forever Young during a bruising stretch duel between the second and third-place finishers.

The complete field for the 2024 Preakness Stakes — from the rail out with trainers, jockeys and odds — is as follows:

▪ 1—Mugatu (Jeff Engler, Joe Bravo, 20-1).

▪ 2—Uncle Heavy (Butch Reid Jr., Irad Ortiz Jr., 20-1).

▪ 3—Catching Freedom (Brad Cox, Flavien Prat, 6-1).

▪ 4—Muth (Bob Baffert, Juan Hernandez, 8-5).

▪ 5—Mystik Dan (Kenny McPeek, Brian Hernandez Jr., 5-2).

▪ 6—Seize the Grey (D. Wayne Lukas, Jaime Torres, 15-1).

▪ 7—Just Steel (D. Wayne Lukas, Joel Rosario, 15-1).

▪ 8—Tuscan Gold (Chad Brown, Tyler Gaffalione, 8-1).

▪ 9—Imagination (Bob Baffert, Frankie Dettori, 6-1).

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