On May 18, Seize the Grey ended Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan’s bid for the Triple Crown when he pulled away on a sloppy Pimlico track to win the 2024 Preakness. The two are scheduled to face off again in the Belmont Stakes this Saturday, but neither runner is favored to win the historic event.

With Belmont Park closed due to renovations until at least 2025, the New York Racing Association will run the 2024 Belmont Stakes at Saratoga Racecourse for the first time. This historic context surrounding the event is a focal point in itself, as Saratoga typically only holds race for 40 days later in the summer. This inflates the race’s importance this year, despite the fact that there is no Triple Crown title on the line.

Mystik Dan and Seize the Grey may have captured the first two legs of this year’s Triple Crown, but oddsmakers for the Belmont have given them the cold shoulder. Mystik Dan is currently 5-1, marking him as nothing more than a contender, while Seize the Grey is 8-1, roughly the same odds he received before he won the Preakness.

Instead of those two runners, the betting public is expected to rally around a pair of horses trained by Chad Brown and Todd Pletcher, respectively. The two trainers have vied with one another in New York for decades and will enter the top two horses in this year’s Belmont: morning line favorite Sierra Leone and precocious up-and-comer Mindframe.

The two horses have had vastly different careers to this point. Sierra Leone, the 9-5 favorite trained by Brown, picked up several solid wins on the Road to the Kentucky Derby, only to fall short in a photo finish to Mystik Dan in Louisville. After the loss, Brown chose to skip the Preakness and prepare Sierra Leone for this race, where he seems well-poised to get revenge on his Derby rival.

Sierra Leone boasts a glowing three-year-old resume, but Pletcher’s best hope, Mindframe, has just two race under his belt and no stakes experience. He won both starts in commanding fashion, but Pletcher’s confidence to enter him in this race is just as responsible for his 7-2 odds on the morning line. Pletcher finished 1-2 in the 2022 Belmont and is sending out a trio of horses in this field

“He’s been super-impressive in his two races and the way he’s done that and how easily he’s won those races, how fast those races have been – it gives you the confidence he has the talent,” Pletcher said, according to The Racing Biz.

Between the wide open field and once-in-a-lifetime feel to the Saratoga setting, this year’s Belmont Stakes is sure to be remembered as unique. With some luck, it could come to mean even more.

Mystik Dan, the upset winner of an exciting three-way photo finish in the 2024 Kentucky Derby, is trending in the right direction after a productive workout Wednesday. Still, his connections do not plan to make an official decision about the Preakness Stakes on May 18 until this weekend.

Mystik Dan’s trainer, Ken McPeek, had nothing but praise for his runner after a vigorous exercise. The horse galloped a little more than a mile with exercise rider Martin Reyes. McPeek didn’t give anything away but considered the update positive.

“I suspect we’ll make a [Preakness] decision over the weekend, or even as late as Monday,” McPeek said, according to the Maryland Jockey’s Club Press Office. “But more than anything, I just want to make sure he’s moving good and eating good and happy. And at this stage, I like what I see.”

Mystik Dan went off at 18-1 odds in the Derby last Saturday but went on to nose out late closer Sierra Leone and Japanese phenom Forever Young in the final strides to the wire. With another $3.1 million in the bank and questions about the horse’s fitness racing twice in two weeks, McPeek and the horse’s owners are warranted to be hesitant with their new superstar.

If he does skip the Preakness, Mystik Dan would be the second winner in three years to do so, turning an oddity into a potential trend as owners grow more and more hesitant to race their horses too often. It was common for horses to race once every two or three weeks back in the day. Now, it is rare for them to run more than once a month. The current Triple Crown is a holdover from previous eras, demanding that three-year-olds compete in three races between May and June in five weeks.

Even if Mystik Dan does race in the Preakness, there’s a distinct possibility that he will not earn favoritism among bettors. Though many of his Derby foes are either off the trail or waiting for the Belmont Stakes in New York, trainer Bob Baffert has been preparing superstar colt Muth to run at Pimlico for weeks. The West Coast trainer attempted to get his horse into the Derby. Still, a state appeals court in Kentucky upheld Churchill Downs’ ban relating to 2021 Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit’s disqualification for failed drug tests three years ago.