Preakness 2024: Start time, horses, channel, how to watch and stream

The 149th Preakness Stakes will run on Saturday, and all eyes will be on Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan to see if we’ll have the first Triple Crown contender in six years.

Mystik Dan’s chances were made easier earlier this week when Muth — who entered as the favorite to win the Preakness — was scratched due to a fever. Muth beat Mystik Dan in the Arkansas Derby in March, and had forced a rare situation where the winner of the Kentucky Derby wasn’t also the favorite to win the Preakness.

Among the other contenders Saturday is Catching Freedom (6-1), who finished fourth in the Kentucky Derby, just 0.4 seconds behind the three-way photo finish. There’s also Imagination (6-1), whose trainer, Bob Baffert, has won the the Preakness a record eight times, most recently last year with National Treasure.

The horses might also be forced to contend with another opponent Saturday — Mother Nature. Forecasters say rain is likely Saturday, with up to half an inch expected and the possibility of a thunderstorm. Temperatures are also forecast to drop into the upper 50s.

NBC is hoping for a big viewership number after the Kentucky Derby averaged 16.7 million viewers, the largest audience for the race since 1989, according to Sports Media Watch. Outside of football and the NCAA women’s basketball national championship, the Derby drew a larger audience than every other sporting event this year.

NBC’s live coverage will begin at 4:30 p.m. Eastern, hosted by Mike Tirico. The race will post at 6:47 p.m., and will stream on Peacock, the NBC Sports App, and NBCSports.com. Early coverage will begin at 1:30 p.m. on CNBC.

Tirico will be joined by analysts Randy Moss and Jerry Bailey, handicapper Matt Bernier, and a host of reporters.

Also joining the broadcast will be MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki, who missed the mark with his Kentucky Derby pick by selecting Just Steel, who finished the race in a distant 17th out of 20 horses. In fairness to Kornacki, he warned everyone that he was picking with his heart and noted he’d picked “a grand total of one Derby winner in the last 10 years — and that winner was later disqualified.”

For the Preakness, Kornacki said he’s picking with his head and not his heart, but ended up at the same place, taking underdog Just Steel to win Saturday in Baltimore.

For more details, Ed Barkowitz has a breakdown of each horse, complete with their jockeys, career earnings, and 2024 stats.

The last horse to win racing’s Triple Crown — the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes — was Justify in 2018.

Justify was just the 13th horse in the 149-year history of the Triple Crown. He certainly came from good stock — he was related to several previous Triple Crown winners, including Secretariat (1973) and Count Fleet (1943).

Three years before Justify, there was American Pharoah, who won the Triple Crown and the Breeders’ Cup Classic, becoming the first horse to win the modern Grand Slam. American Pharoah ended a 37-year Triple Crown drought that dated back to Affirmed in 1978.