Most of the talk regarding the 151st Preakness Stakes has focused on the horses that aren’t in the field or the calendar shortcomings with the Triple Crown. While those are fair talking points, we can save them for another day because the field is set and the post positions have been drawn for the second leg of the Triple Crown. This year’s Preakness Stakes will be held at Laurel Park instead of Pimlico Race Course, as the host venue undergoes a very big, very expensive transformation.
A field of 14 has drawn into the Preakness Stakes this year, but Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo is not among the contenders. Ocelli, Robusta, and Incredibolt ran in the Kentucky Derby and will head to the starting gate at Laurel Park barring a scratch and so will Great White, who was scratched just before entering the starting gate at Churchill Downs after having a bit of a meltdown just prior to post.
Here are the post positions, horses, jockeys, trainers, and opening odds for the Preakness Stakes, with a scheduled post time of 4 p.m. ET on Saturday, May 16.
2026 Preakness Stakes Post Draw
| Post | Horse | Jockey | Trainer | Odds |
| 1 | Taj Mahal | S. Russell | B. Russell | 5-1 |
| 2 | Ocelli | T. Gaffalione | W. Beckman | 6-1 |
| 3 | Crupper | J. Alvarado | D. Von Hemel | 30-1 |
| 4 | Robusta | R. Bejarano | D. O’Neill | 30-1 |
| 5 | Talkin | I. Ortiz Jr. | D. Gargan | 20-1 |
| 6 | Chip Honcho | J. Ortiz | S. Asmussen | 5-1 |
| 7 | The Hell We Did | L. Saez | T. Fincher | 15-1 |
| 8 | Bull by the Horns | M. Husbands | S. Joseph Jr. | 30-1 |
| 9 | Iron Honor | F. Prat | C. Brown | 9/2 |
| 10 | Napoleon Solo | P. Lopez | C. Summers | 8-1 |
| 11 | Corona De Oro | J. Velazquez | D. Stewart | 30-1 |
| 12 | Incredibolt | J. Torres | R. Mott | 5-1 |
| 13 | Great White | A. Achard | J. Ennis | 15-1 |
| 14 | Pretty Boy Miah | R. Santana Jr. | J. Englehart | 15-1 |
These are the opening line odds right after the Preakness Stakes draw was announced.
While the race will not be held at Pimlico, the horses and riders will still be asked to go 1 3/16 miles, a distance rarely utilized at Laurel Park. It will not be nearly as raucous of an environment, as the Preakness normally attracts over 100,000 people to Pimlico, but will be capped below 5,000 spectators at Laurel Park. We’ll see what, if any, impact that has on the horses, especially with a pretty big field for this year’s race. One of the big storylines with the Kentucky Derby is the amount of traffic and all the bumping throughout the race with 20 horses and a major push to get to the rail and get the shortest trip. The Preakness has its biggest field since 2011.
We’ll have much deeper dives into the race and all of the action at Laurel Park throughout the course of the week, but a few notes on the short prices that are slated to start here.
9 Iron Honor (9/2)
Flavien Prat and Chad Brown will also draw bets when they team up in a major stakes bet and Iron Honor was installed as the favorite after the post draw. The son of Nyquist won his maiden and the Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct before failing to fire in the Wood Memorial last month with a seventh-place finish. Brown won this race back in 2022 with Early Voting and rider Jose Ortiz. Prat won in 2021 with Rombauer for Michael McCarthy, who does not have an entry in this race after winning last year with Journalism.
1 Taj Mahal (5-1)
Taj Mahal has some recent history to overcome, as a non-Kentucky-bred horse hasn’t won this race since California Chrome was victorious back in 2014. However, rider Sheldon Russell knows every speck of dirt on this track and this horse has run and been trained here, including a win in the Federico Tesio. Also, trainer Brittany Russell is hoping to ride the wave of Cherie DeVaux’s Kentucky Derby victory. Russell would be the first female trainer to win the Preakness if Taj Mahal wins on Saturday.
6 Chip Honcho (5-1)
Bettors will be heading to the window to back Chip Honcho after Jose Ortiz won the Kentucky Derby, edging out brother Irad Ortiz Jr. Trainer Steve Asmussen has to like the 6 post here, as his horse is looking to bounce back from a disappointing fifth in the Louisiana Derby. This will be his first start away from Fair Grounds since breaking his maiden at Churchill Downs last November. His top win is the Gun Runner Stakes, a listed stakes scamper at Fair Grounds last December, but his best performance was a runner-up in the Risen Star Stakes back on Valentine’s Day.
12 Incredibolt (5-1)
Jaime Torres won aboard Seize the Grey for the late D. Wayne Lukas back in 2024 and he’ll be looking for the win here on Incredibolt, who ran sixth in the Kentucky Derby. This is a horse that has finished 4, 1, 1, 6, 1, 6 in his career, with notable wins in the Virginia Derby at Colonial Downs and Street Sense Stakes at Churchill last October. Incredibolt was four lengths back of Golden Tempo, but ran a pretty solid race, all things considered. Torres maybe could have been closer to the pacesetters and eliminated some of the tiring horses he had to navigate around, but Riley Mott seems content in his ability to come back on short rest.
2 Ocelli (6-1)
We had a historic ending in the Kentucky Derby, but we were pretty close to having another one, as 70-1 shot Ocelli finished third after getting into the field due to scratches. D.W. Beckman has a horse here that hasn’t won yet in seven tries, but that Kentucky Derby effort seemed to spark a lot of confidence. This will be his quickest turnaround, but he has also run at least once a month since his debut on Nov. 23 and has never had more than a month off, so this just might be the right kind of gamble for Beckman and the connections to take.
Be sure to hear more analysis from Mike Somich and Aaron Halterman leading up to the Preakness Stakes on the VSiN At The Track podcast.
