Racing: Bodemeister eyes revenge

I'll Have Another strides out before the Preakness Stakes. Photo / AP

Almost immediately, there was talk of lucky numbers.

Kentucky Derby winner I'll Have Another drew the No 9 post at the post-position draw for the 137th running of the Preakness tomorrow (NZT). After racing from the 19th position - and becoming the first to win from that spot - in Kentucky, Doug O'Neill saw no problem.

"Anything with a nine is fine for us," the gregarious trainer of I'll Have Another told the Baltimore Sun.

Bodemeister, meanwhile, drew the seven spot. That, friends joked with trainer Bob Baffert, could work; his son Bode, after all, is 7 years old.

But when the talk of good fortune and happy circumstance subsided, what was left were slivers of evidence revealing how the race will be run.

Maryland's odds maker Frank Carulli installed Bodemeister as an 8-5 morning line favourite after the draw on Thursday. I'll Have Another came in as the second choice at 5-2.

O'Neill has said he expected - and accepted - that Bodemeister's startling run at the Derby would make him the favourite. He said Baffert, a fellow California-based trainer, had earned the benefit of the bet.

"He's won five of these things," he said, "and I've never even run a horse here."

Yet O'Neill pushed the idea that his horse, faced with a field devoid of other speed, will run right along with Bodemeister if he needs to.

"I'm confident," said O'Neill, who believes his horse has improved since winning the Derby.

"You never know, but as long as we continue to train like our horse has trained, we won't be that far off Bodemeister."

At the Derby, other sprinters went out after Bodemeister when the colt broke so well under jockey Mike Smith and Bodemeister began to tire down the stretch. Baffert would not bother to reminisce about that race or second-guess the ride - "Once it's done, it's done," he said - but he certainly feels that a slower pace and shorter way to go will help his horse at Pimlico.

Two other Derby finishers, Went the Day Well (fifth post) and Creative Cause (sixth post), are the third favourites, at 6-1.

"This horse, I think he could have won the Derby if he had broken right, but he didn't," said Barry Irwin, the managing partner of Went the Day Well ownership group Team Valor International.