Churchill Downs Inc. and the New York Racing Association have launched a six-race Thoroughbred Championship Series that leaves out the Preakness, putting Maryland’s big bet on the race under fresh pressure. The announcement came last Monday, and Maryland leaders said they did not know about it before it was made public.
The timing matters because Maryland has spent almost $600 million in Maryland tax dollars to invest in Pimlico and Laurel Park and the 151-year-old race, including a Pimlico Race Course rebuild and the purchase of the Preakness Stakes rights. That spending was meant to reinforce the race’s economic weight, not watch a new national series form around it without it.
The exclusion lands hard because the Preakness was part of a broader wager that Maryland’s horse racing industry could still draw money and attention. Instead, the new series creates another lane for top-level racing while leaving Maryland’s signature event outside the frame.
That is the friction Maryland now has to live with. The state committed more than half a billion dollars to bolster an industry whose future is already uncertain as interest in thoroughbred racing wanes, yet the newest national structure was announced without the race it had just helped finance.
What Maryland does next remains the open question. The state has already paid for the track, the rights and the rebuild; the harder task is proving that investment still returns value when the biggest new series in the sport does not include the Preakness.
