{"id":482,"date":"2026-05-17T04:07:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T04:07:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacksonvillemovingnews.com\/?p=482"},"modified":"2026-05-17T04:07:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T04:07:12","slug":"a-horse-almost-didnt-race-in-the-preakness-thanks-to-a-jockeys-suggestion-it-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jacksonvillemovingnews.com\/?p=482","title":{"rendered":"A horse almost didn’t race in the Preakness. Thanks to a jockey’s suggestion, it won."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Before winning the 151st Preakness Stakes, Napoleon Solo almost wasn\u2019t entered in the race known as the middle jewel of horse racing\u2019s Triple Crown.<\/p>\n

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Napoleon Solo had won the first two races of its career in 2025, but this year had competed twice and finished fifth place both times. <\/p>\n

It was after the second race, April\u2019s Wood Memorial, that jockey Paco Lopez told the decision-makers behind the horse, owner Al Gold and trainer Chad Summers, that there was more to its potential than its most recent finishes indicated.<\/p>\n

\u201cPaco told Chad after the Wood to go to this race,\u201d Gold said on the NBC Sports broadcast. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to come here, I didn\u2019t think this horse could go this far.\u201d<\/p>\n

For months, Gold and Summers had concerns about how the 3-year-old horse would fare over the 1 3\/16th mile distance at Laurel Park, the temporary Maryland home of the Preakness due to renovations at its longtime home course, Pimlico.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last few days we were worried about, can he go the distance? Are we gonna get loose?\u201d Gold said. <\/p>\n

The horse did, and then some, en route to earning the Woodlawn Vase trophy.<\/p>\n

In a wide-open, 14-horse field after Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo and runner-up Renegade both sat out, pre-race favorite Taj Mahal ran in front entering the final straightaway but Napoleon Solo, with Lopez aboard, stayed close and then burst ahead to take the lead as the park\u2019s main grandstand came into view. Iron Honor, another pre-race betting favorite, tried to challenge Napoleon Solo down the homestretch but couldn\u2019t come within a length of the winner. <\/p>\n

Napoleon Solo had entered as a 7-to-1 favorite before taking home $1.2 million out of the $2 million purse and claimed the second of the Triple Crown races. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had everything go wrong this 3-year-old year, and we just kind of stayed the course and stayed the course,\u201d Summers told NBC Sports after the win. \u201cYou know, we had a lot of critics out there that told us to just shut up, and we just kept with it, and it worked out today.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than a decade ago, Summers had tried a bit of everything to break into horse racing \u2014 except for training. He had \u201chotwalked\u201d horses, walking them to warm them up or cool them down before or after workouts. He\u2019d tried covering the sport as a writer, worked as a manager and later found success as a bloodhorse agent. To make ends meet in the racing industry, \u201cI\u2019ve lived in tack rooms, I\u2019ve lived in my car,\u201d Summers recalled in 2023.<\/p>\n

In 2014, he\u2019d even become an owner after helping assemble a group of owners to purchase a horse named Mind Your Biscuits. <\/p>\n

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\u201cI didn\u2019t really want to be a trainer, to be honest with you,\u201d Summers said in 2017, citing the toll of the job\u2019s long hours on a family.<\/p>\n

But Summers ultimately did decide to train Mind Your Biscuits, and after losing his first five races, Summers watched in 2017 as the horse dominated en route to a major $2 million race in Dubai. It was a stunning first win for both horse and trainer. That win, and a repeat in the same $2 million Dubai race a year later in 2018, meant Summers no longer had to sleep in a tack room. <\/p>\n

Yet for all that early success, Summers had never been able to break through in a Triple Crown race. <\/p>\n

Until Saturday.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIt’s the official cocktail of the Triple Crown’s “middle jewel.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n

Summers primarily trains his horses out of New York, where Napoleon Solo had won its first two starts, both last year. Poor weather had led Napoleon Solo to split his time this spring between New York and Florida, with also time in Kentucky, Summers told the NBC Sports broadcast, and what he and his team noticed was a contender coming on strong even as it finished fifth in both of its starts this year, in February and April.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just kept getting better every day,\u201d Summers said.<\/p>\n

That led Gold and Summers to take seriously the suggestion from their jockey, Lopez, to run the Preakness. <\/p>\n

\u201cPaco, it\u2019s you, baby,\u201d Gold said. \u201cYou did this, it\u2019s awesome.\u201d <\/p>\n

The race was Lopez\u2019s fifth in the saddle on Saturday alone, and his second first place. In his career, Lopez now has 4,434 wins in more than 21,000 starts, according to Equibase.<\/p>\n

At the start of the week, Summers assessed Napoleon Solo as \u201cspecial.\u201d But he cautioned that the rest of the field was shaping up to be fast. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the middle jewel of the Triple Crown, right?\u201d Summers said. \u201cI mean everybody wants to win that Woodlawn Vase.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several days later, Napoleon Solo had done so, convincingly. But Summers did not have much time to celebrate his biggest win in nearly a decade, however. <\/p>\n

Saturday at the Preakness does not conclude with the main event; other races follow on the schedule, which meant that Summers was soon back in Laurel Park\u2019s paddock, watching as another horse he trained prepared for its own trip around the track.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIt’s the most prestigious prize in horse racing \u2013 and the most elusive\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Napoleon Solo was not among the favorites to win the 151st Preakness Stakes, but belief in the horse\u2019s potential paid off with a big win Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-preakness-stakes"],"yoast_head":"\nA horse almost didn't race in the Preakness. 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