Who Won the Preakness Stakes In 2024?

Key Takeaways:

• Seize the Grey won the 2024 Preakness Stakes with a wire-to-wire victory on a muddy track.
• Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan finished second, while Catching Freedom placed third; Muth was scratched due to a fever.
• After a few rocky starts in later races, Seize the Grey was retired and now resides at Gainesway Farm.

Before jumping into the 2025 edition of the Preakness, let’s look back at the second jewel of the 2024 Triple Crown. The 149th Preakness Stakes was run at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland, on May 18, 2024, two weeks after the Kentucky Derby. All eyes were on upset Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan for trainer Kenny McPeek and jockey Brian Hernandez, Jr., to see if he could run back to that performance and win his second Triple Crown race.

However, it was a horse who ran just a few races earlier on Kentucky Derby day at Churchill Downs who would spoil the Triple Crown bid. Seize the Grey, the Pat Day Mile (G2) winner, bounced to the lead and never relented. Seize the Grey seized the day in his first Triple Crown race try, giving hall of fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas his seventh Preakness win.

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2024 Preakness Stakes Field

Nine horses were entered in the 2024 Preakness Stakes, with Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan going off as the post-time favorite.

Four of the entrants in the second leg of the Triple Crown had run at Churchill Downs two weeks before the Preakness. Catching Freedom, Just Steel, and Mystik Dan all came out of the Kentucky Derby, while Seize the Grey stretched out from the Pat Day Mile. The rest of the runners came out of Kentucky Derby points races, and took a little more time to come back in the Preakness Stakes.

Eight horses actually started in the second jewel of the Triple Crown, since original morning-line favorite Muth was scratched after spiking a fever in the days leading up to the race.

2024 Preakness Stakes Horse Race

After a rainy Preakness day, there was a muddy track for the 2024 Preakness Stakes, so the horse race would be a test not only of form and stamina, but also of which horse could handle the conditions. Seize the Grey had broken his maiden over a sloppy track at Saratoga Race Course the year before and was stakes-placed on muddy going as a juvenile, and he picked right back up where he left off from that. Under his regular jockey, Jaime Torres, the grey son of Arrogate bounced out to the lead and never relented.

Imagination, under jockey Frankie Dettori, prompted the pace early and tracked in the closest range of the leader for much of the race, but could not match Seize the Grey in the lane and dropped away. Jockey Brian Hernandez, Jr. had favorite Mystik Dan midfield, asked him for a run in the lane, but could not close up the ground Seize the Grey had already opened. There would be no Triple Crown winner in 2024, as Mystik Dan crossed the finish line 2 ¼ lengths behind Seize the Grey. The favorite saved place by a head over Catching Freedom, who was rallying under Flavien Prat.

It was another six lengths back from Catching Freedom to fourth-place Tuscan Gold. Just Steel, Uncle Heavy, Imagination, and Mugatu completed the order of finish.

Seize the Grey became D. Wayne Lukas’s seventh Preakness winner during his illustrious career, and his first since Oxbow, who upset the race in 2013. His seven victories in the second Triple Crown race are second all time behind only Bob Baffert, who has eight wins in the signature event at Pimlico Race Course. Lukas’ win with Seize the Grey on the second Saturday in May also made him the oldest trainer to win a Triple Crown race, as he was 88 at the time.

Seize the Grey in the Belmont Stakes

After Seize the Grey won the Preakness, he returned to competition three weeks after his Preakness win, contesting the Belmont at Saratoga Race Course. He and Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan both tried to become the first horse since Justify in 2018 to win more than one Triple Crown race in the same year, but neither could accomplish the feat.

Seize the Grey set the pace in the third and final Triple Crown race, but took pressure from Dornoch and lost the lead with about a quarter of a mile to go. Perhaps the long campaign caught up to him, perhaps the extra distance of the Preakness Stakes did, and Seize the Grey weakened to cross the finish line seventh, 12 ¾ lengths behind Dornoch.

Seize the Grey’s Later Three-Year-Old Races

It was about a month and a half until Seize the Grey returned to the starting gate, once again at Saratoga, for the Jim Dandy (G2) on July 27. Cutting back to 1 ⅛ miles, he did not show the same sharp early pace that he had when winning the Preakness Stakes. Chasing toward the rear of a compact six-horse field, ahead of only Sierra Leone early, he was not able to muster a rally, and weakened through the late going. He finished fourth, 12 lengths behind winning Fierceness.

Seize the Grey returned about two months later at Parx for the 1 ⅛-mile Pennsylvania Derby (G1). Parx can be very good to horses with enough early speed, and the flashy grey tapped right back into the pace that won him the Preakness. He got a little pressure from long shot Just Step on It early, but outlasted him on the front end. The more imposing Stronghold took a shot at him as well, looming through midstretch, but Seize the Grey kicked away and won by 3 ¾ lengths over that foe.

He returned on November 2 at Del Mar, turning back in distance for the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile. Unable to make the top against older foes like T O Saint Denis and Full Serrano, he chased toward the front of midfield, still only two to three lengths from the early pace. Much like his trip in the Jim Dandy, he didn’t find the kick he needed in the lane, flattened a bit late. He finished eighth, 7 ½ lengths behind Full Serrano.

The Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile was Seize the Grey’s final horse race. Just after the Breeders’ Cup, he was officially retired, and in 2025, he is standing his first season at Gainesway Farm.

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