Horse Racing - The Preakness Stakes

By Author: Kellen Sears
Total Articles: 381
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Horse Racing is a sport that has been around for centuries and has a very rich history of tradition and culture. One of the factors that has made it this way is the race tracks themselves and what they bring to the sport. One of the most well known race tracks in America is the Pimlico Race Track, found in Baltimore, Maryland. The Pimlico track is known as a thoroughbred track and is one of the most respected venues in all of North America. It is found on a 140-acre area of land and is usually open for live racing from early March to about October with breaks in-between. One of the reasons it has become so famous is because it is the host of one of the Triple Crown Races, namely the Preakness Stakes.

The Preakness Stakes is not the only event that is held here, however, and it is actually the home of a variety of other stakes events including The Maryland Juvenile Championship, the Rollicking Stakes, the Challedon Stakes, and The Maryland Million among others. It is the second oldest track in the United States is still highly regarded in the sport of horse racing. The only complex older than Pimlico is Saratoga, ...
... which only opened six years before Pimlico did.

Pimlico officially opened on October 25, 1870, but the plans to create it go back to 1868 where a group of businessmen came together and decided to have a large race in commemoration of a special dinner party. This is where the idea of the track was formed and first carried out. The three main contributors to the idea were Milton H. Sanford, John Hunter, and Oden Bowie (who was the Maryland Governor at the time). They came up with the idea to have a two-mile stakes horse be held in the latter part of the year and to race third year colts. They agreed on an initial purse of $15,000 and began the construction of the course.

As the race track was being constructed it was soon purchase by the Maryland Jockey Club and given the name "Pimlico" which is comes from the name of the first English settlers to arrive in that area. The whole track took up about 70 acres and was completed in time for the 1870 dinner party. The horse that won that race was named "Preakness" and thus the Preakness Stakes was born.

Ever since then, this track has been a renowned course and has seen the likes of the horse Seabiscuit among others. The track was most recently handled by the Magna Entertainment Corp who went bankrupt last year. Up until this point, however, the track has seen a multitude of different things through its course. There have been wars fought nearby, riots, fires, recession and much more that have all affected the track in one way or another. All of these different events add to that rich history that make Pimlico what it is today and future events will only add to that culture that has made it so famous.
ABOUT AUTHOR:-
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Kellen Sears writes reviews on various sporting events including the online betting websites. In this piece of write up he highlights one of the popular sports horse racing. He takes the readers thought the memory lanes of the past and made them look back at the last Triple Crown races.