Women Are Rewriting the Triple Crown Story -- Can Brittany Russell Finish the Set?

Before June 10, 2023, forty-three women trainers had saddled horses in Triple Crown races. None of them had ever won one.

Jena Antonucci was the forty-fourth. That afternoon at Belmont Park, a 7-1 colt named Arcangelo, who had run in neither the Kentucky Derby nor the Preakness, made a move on the inside at the top of the stretch and pulled away by a length and a half. The win made Antonucci the first woman in the sport's history to train the winner of a Triple Crown race, and Arcangelo went on that year to take the Travers and earn an Eclipse Award as Champion 3-Year-Old Male. Her remark afterward is the one that has aged into a quote people remember.

"Never give up," Antonucci said. "And if you can't find a seat at the table, make your own table."

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How Cherie DeVaux Opened the Second Door at the Kentucky Derby

Two weekends ago at Churchill Downs, Cherie DeVaux opened her seat. Her 23-1 colt Golden Tempo was last in a field of eighteen for most of the 152nd Kentucky Derby. Around the far turn, jockey Jose Ortiz started picking off horses one by one. At the top of the stretch Golden Tempo was thirteenth. He chose the outside lane, went around the field rather than through it, and caught the favorite, Renegade, ridden by Ortiz's older brother Irad, just before the wire. DeVaux became the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner in the race's 152-year history.

Asked about the gendered framing after the race, DeVaux delivered a line that landed as the most-quoted moment of the day, partly because it was not the inspirational one anyone expected.

"I'm just glad I don't have to answer that question anymore," she said.

Brittany Russell and Taj Mahal Arrive at the 151st Preakness

That is the chain Brittany Russell walks into on Saturday afternoon at Laurel Park.

Russell saddles Taj Mahal in the 151st running of the Preakness Stakes, her first classic starter in her eighth year of training. The colt is unbeaten in three career starts, all of them at Laurel, including a wire-to-wire victory in the Federico Tesio Stakes on April 18 that he won by more than eight lengths. No other horse in the Preakness field has raced on the Laurel surface. Taj Mahal opened at 5-1, second choice on the morning line behind Iron Honor at 9-2.

If he wins, Russell becomes the first woman to train a Preakness winner. Three women, three Triple Crown races, three years.

"It would sort of feel probably a little fairytale-like," Russell told the Associated Press. "Jena opened the door just a couple years ago with Arcangelo, and Cherie got it done in the Kentucky Derby."

Why the Russell's Home-Track Story Is Bigger Than Home Cooking

There is more than one piece of texture that separates Russell's story from the two that opened it. The Preakness is being run at Laurel Park for the first time in 118 years, while Pimlico undergoes a $400 million redevelopment. Laurel is Russell's home track. She led the Maryland trainer standings in 2023 and repeated the feat in 2024. Most weekends she and her husband take their two children, six-year-old Edy and four-year-old Rye, to the same track where the Preakness will run on Saturday.

Her husband is Sheldon Russell, and he is the jockey on Taj Mahal. He has ridden the colt in all three of his career starts. He has ridden in the Preakness three times before this, with a best finish of fifth on Chase the Chaos in 2023. If Taj Mahal wins, the Russells become the first married couple, working as trainer and jockey, to win a Triple Crown race. It is the kind of stat that sits quietly under the bigger narrative until you say it out loud.

"The dream, the goal was always to get one that would take us to one of the big races, and he's sort of taken us there," Sheldon Russell told the AP. "Just like a normal day, really."

The Post-Position Draw the Trainer Did Not Want

The fairytale wants the post draw to cooperate. It did not.

Russell drew Post 1, the rail. After the draw she said the quiet part out loud. "You know it's funny," she told reporters. "I said to myself the only spot I was hoping not to be was the rail. It's OK. It's all good."

Her concern is not sentimental. The Preakness at 1 3/16 miles at Laurel begins with a run of less than 700 feet before the first turn, which is shorter than the run-up at Pimlico by a significant margin. A horse on the rail with thirteen rivals to his outside, several of them with early speed, has to choose between gunning to clear the field and burning energy he will want later, or settling back and getting squeezed into traffic. Sheldon Russell will be threading a needle in the first quarter of a mile, and how cleanly he does it will determine whether Taj Mahal has anything left to give in the stretch.

What a Russell Win Would Mean for the Preakness and the Sport

The handicapping question is real. So is the bigger one. After more than a century and a half of Triple Crown racing in which not a single woman trained a winner, the chain that began with Antonucci's Belmont in 2023 and continued with DeVaux's Derby two weeks ago could close on Saturday afternoon at a track that is hosting the race for the first time. Russell would also become the first woman to saddle a Preakness winner. She would be the seventeenth woman ever to start a horse in the race, and the first to do so since Kelly Rubley sent out Alwaysmining in 2019. The closest a woman has previously come was Nancy Alberts in 2002, whose Magic Weisner finished second by three-quarters of a length to War Emblem.

Why Russell, Like DeVaux, Keeps Redirecting the Gender Question

Russell, like DeVaux, has been clear that she did not set out to chase a record.

"I'm a horse trainer," she told BloodHorse, "and my peers, whether they're male or female, they know I just do my job. You want to be the best no matter what."

She also said this, in the same conversation, and it is the line that holds both ideas at once.

"The question has to be asked because, if I'm going to be the only female with a horse in the Preakness and nobody's ever done it, yeah, it is a big deal, right? Cherie just made history, Jena made history. It'd still be really cool if I was the tenth woman to do it, but if I was the first to do it too, it'd be pretty special."

Three Women, Three Races, Three Years

Whether Saturday closes the loop or not, the door Antonucci opened in 2023 is not closing again. On Saturday afternoon at Laurel, with her husband in the saddle and her kids in the stands, Brittany Russell will know within roughly two minutes whether she is the one who walks through it next.

The gates open at 7:01 p.m. Eastern.

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