The decision came Wednesday afternoon. Cherie DeVaux, the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner in the race's 152-year history, posted a statement on X confirming that Golden Tempo will not contest the May 16 Preakness Stakes at Laurel Park and will instead be pointed toward the June 6 Belmont Stakes at Saratoga Race Course. [1] "After much thoughtful discussion as a team, we have decided that Golden Tempo will bypass the Preakness Stakes," the statement read. "Golden gave us the race of a lifetime in the Kentucky Derby, and we believe the best decision for him moving forward is to give him a little more time following such a tremendous effort. His health, happiness, and long-term future will always remain our top priority. We are looking forward to pointing him toward the Belmont Stakes and are excited for what lies ahead with this very special horse." [2] The Triple Crown is off the table for 2026. The women-breaking-ceilings thread now follows the trainer to Saratoga, where DeVaux started her career.

Yesterday's paper held the decision open; DeVaux's stated calendar was "by the end of the week." She made the call Wednesday — one day earlier than the original Friday-decision window. Golden Tempo, a 23-1 long shot in the Derby who rallied from last to win by a neck over Renegade in 2:02.27, had gone through three walk days at Keeneland, returned to the track for light jogging on Wednesday morning, and was scheduled to resume galloping Friday. The training observations did not produce a definitive setback. The Derby barn had managed cracked heels and a three-quarter shoe leading up to the May 2 race; DeVaux called those "a non-event" at the time, and Wednesday's announcement does not cite any new physical concern. What it cites is the spacing. Two weeks between the Derby and the Preakness is, in the trainer's framing, simply not enough recovery time to ask a deep-closer to run again at full effort.

Golden Tempo becomes the third Kentucky Derby winner in the past five years to skip the Preakness — joining Rich Strike in 2022 and Sovereignty in 2025. Sovereignty, last year's Bill Mott trainee for Godolphin Racing, took the same path and won the Belmont Stakes, then the Travers Stakes, then returned as a four-year-old. He is the precedent on the page. DeVaux, who served as an assistant to trainer Chad Brown for approximately eight years before opening her own stable in 2017, has watched the Sovereignty template unfold from inside the sport. Mott's reasoning — that two-week turnarounds for elite three-year-olds produce more soundness loss than the prestige of a Triple Crown justifies — is the reasoning DeVaux is now applying. "I appreciate the history of it," she said Sunday at Churchill Downs. "Horses are definitely different. They're not built the same. They're not trained the same as back then. But current times have shown that it can be done with the right horse." [3]

The Triple Crown calendar is the structural problem the decision exposes. Two weeks between the Derby and Preakness, three weeks between the Preakness and the Belmont — total of five weeks for the three races. The thirteen horses in history who have won the Triple Crown did so in the older training paradigm where horses ran more frequently, on harder surfaces, with shorter freshening cycles. Modern trainers run their horses less often, monitor them more closely, and prefer four-to-six-week intervals. Maryland racing officials are now reportedly considering moving the Preakness from the third Saturday in May to the fourth Saturday — adding a week to the gap between the Derby and the Preakness — to increase the chances of more Derby horses running at Pimlico. The decision is not yet made. Golden Tempo's defection is the latest data point in the case for that change. None of the eighteen horses who ran in this year's Derby is heading to the Preakness; the only one considered, Golden Tempo, is now out. American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018 are the only horses to sweep all three races over the past four decades.

The structural variables compound. Pimlico Race Course is undergoing a $400 million renovation; the 2026 Preakness will run at Laurel Park over the shorter 1 3/16-mile distance instead of Pimlico's traditional 1 3/16-mile dimension. Belmont Park is also under reconstruction; the Belmont Stakes returns to Saratoga for a third and final year and will be run at a 1 1/4-mile distance — the Derby's distance, not the traditional 1 1/2-mile Belmont. Both classics are being staged at temporary venues at non-traditional distances. The reconstruction calendar is itself a kind of Triple Crown disruption. DeVaux's decision factors include not only the two-week turnaround and the horse's recovery but also the geography: Saratoga Springs is where she started her career. The five-week interval between the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont, plus the Saratoga venue, plus the Curlin-Bernardini distance breeding that suggests Golden Tempo wants more ground than the Preakness offers — all of it lines up.

The women-breaking-ceilings register holds. DeVaux remains the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner. Whether she becomes the first woman to win a Triple Crown classic in the same year (after Jena Antonucci's Belmont with Arcangelo in 2023) is now a June 6 question. Donna Brothers, the first female jockey to win a Triple Crown race, interviewed DeVaux before the Derby in her 26th and final Kentucky Derby broadcast for NBC; the moment is now visible footage. Susannah Flood, Bess Wohl, Whitney White on Liberation. DeVaux on Golden Tempo. Day-of receipts on women operating at the upper levels of fields long structurally male. The Saratoga Springs registry that DeVaux carries — born there, raised in horse country, started her career there — adds a sentimental dimension that the trainer herself has downplayed in interviews. "Being a woman or my gender has never really crossed my mind in this journey of mine," she said in the Derby winner's-circle press conference. "It really is an honor to be able to be that person for other women or other little girls to look up to." [4]

Golden Tempo will resume galloping at Keeneland on Friday and ship to Saratoga in the days before June 6. Renegade and Chief Wallabee are also pointed toward the Belmont. Crude Velocity, the Bob Baffert trainee who won the Pat Day Mile on Derby day, has emerged as the 4-1 morning-line favorite for the Preakness, with Taj Mahal at 20-1 and Silent Tactic at 25-1 attracting handicappers' attention. The Pimlico race, when it runs May 16, will go off without a Derby winner for the sixth time in the past eight years — the structural fact that the Triple Crown itself is the variable, not any one horse's fitness. DeVaux's decision is a calendar decision more than a fitness decision. The horse will run on June 6. The question is whether a thirty-percent share of the Belmont field — Golden Tempo, Renegade, and the other Derby horses skipping the Preakness — converges to make the third leg of the Triple Crown the field that should have run the second leg.

-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos