Golden Tempo will skip the Preakness and await the Belmont. BloodHorse reported the decision; NYRA's contender page now makes the June 6 Saratoga target the public plan; NBC Sports framed the move inside the larger Triple Crown question of whether the Derby winner can, or should, chase all three races. [1][2][3]
The paper's Monday piece on DeVaux locking Golden Tempo into the Belmont argued that Cherie DeVaux had made the calendar answer to the horse. Tuesday's follow-through is simple: the Preakness will not get the Derby winner, and the Belmont will. [1]
The choice matters because DeVaux is not only managing a colt. She is the first female trainer to win the Kentucky Derby, and she is declining the old script in public. The Triple Crown sells urgency. Trainers increasingly sell recovery. DeVaux's power is that she can say no after winning the race every owner dreams of winning.
MSM treats the decision as prudent horse management. X reads it as a trainer refusing a men's-club calendar. The paper's lane is the institutional one: a sport built around three races in five weeks is watching its most valuable horses opt out of the middle act.
Golden Tempo now gets Saratoga, DeVaux's terrain. The Preakness gets a field without the Derby winner. The Triple Crown gets another data point against its own compression.
-- AMARA OKONKWO, Lagos