May 7, 2025:
Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty will not run in the 150th Preakness Stakes later this month (May 17, 2025).
Trainer Bill Mott, a graduate of Mobridge High School in north central South Dakota, said the plan will be to enter Sovereignty in the Belmont Stakes June 7.
Sovereignty is Mott’s second Derby winner. In 2019, Maximum Security was initially declared the winner, but was eventually disqualified from the race for interfering with two other horses. That’s when Mott’s horse, Country House, moved from second to first to give Mott his first Kentucky Derby win.
During a conversation with Mott this week (May 6, 2025), DRG Media Group News and Farm Director Jody Heemstra asked him about winning the Kentucky Derby in two very different ways.
Sovereignty had 7-1 odds of winning the 1¼ mile long Kentucky Derby and did it in a time of 2:02.31.
This year’s Preakness Stakes will be the last race held at Pimlico Race Course before the track gets rebuilt. The current plan is for next year’s Preakness to be run at Laurel Park while Pimlico is under construction.
Listen to the entire conversation with Mott in this DRG Media Group Beyond the Mic podcast.
May 6, 2025:
UNDATED (AP)- Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty will not run in the Preakness Stakes, officials announced Tuesday (May 6, 2025), meaning there won’t be a Triple Crown champion for a seventh consecutive year.
“We received a call today from trainer Bill Mott that Sovereignty will not be competing in the Preakness,” said Mike Rogers, executive VP of 1/ST Racing, which operates the Preakness. “We extend our congratulations to the connections of Sovereignty and respect their decision.”
Mott told Preakness officials the plan will be to enter Sovereignty in the Belmont Stakes, the third jewel of the Triple Crown, on June 7 at Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York. Mott on Sunday morning had foreshadowed skipping the Preakness in the name of long-term interests.
“We want to do what’s best for the horse,” he told reporters at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. “Of course, you always think about a Triple Crown, and that’s not something we’re not going to think about.”
Sovereignty won a muddy Derby with jockey Junior Alvarado at odds of 7-1 by passing favorite Journalism down the stretch.
United Arab Emirates-based Godolphin owns Sovereignty. A call and a message sent by The Associated Press to Godolphin’s U.S. director of bloodstock, Michael Banahan, were not immediately returned.
This is the fourth time since Justify won all three races in 2018 that the Preakness will go on without a true shot at a Triple Crown. The two-week turnaround from the Kentucky Derby to the Preakness and changes in modern racing have sparked debate around the sport about spacing out the races.
Prominent owner Mike Repole earlier Tuesday posted on social media a proposal to move the Belmont to second in the Triple Crown order, four weeks after the Kentucky Derby and sliding the Preakness back further with the aim of keeping more of the top horses involved.
“The Preakness being run two weeks after the Kentucky Derby, in this new day and age in racing, shows the lack of vision and leadership needed to evolve this sport,” Repole wrote. “I expect the top three finishers of this year’s Derby to skip the Preakness and go right to the Belmont.”
No decision has been made on second-place finisher Journalism or third-place Baeza for the 150th running of the Preakness, the last at Pimlico Race Course before it is knocked down and rebuilt.
May 5, 2025:
The trainer of the horse that won Saturday’s (May 3, 2025) Kentucky Derby is originally from Mobridge.
Sovereignty had 7-1 odds of winning the 1¼ mile long Kentucky Derby for four-time trainer of the year Bill Mott, but the colt did it in a time of 2:02.31. The win was worth $3.1 million of the total $5 million purse.
Sovereignty is Mott’s second Derby winner. In 2019, Maximum Security was initially declared the winner, but was eventually disqualified from the race for interfering with the travel of two other horses. That’s when Mott’s horse, Country House, moved from second to first to give Mott his first Kentucky Derby win.
According to the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, Mott started training thoroughbreds with his family at the age of 15. At age 16, his horse Kosmic Tour won the South Dakota Futurity at Park Jefferson.
Mott’s professional training career began in 1973. He is probably best known for being the trainer of Hall of Fame thoroughbred, Cigar. The colt won 16 consecutive victories, including the inaugural Dubai World Cup in 1996. Cigar won 15 stakes races and was voted Horse of the Year in 1995 and 1996. The horse was retired with earnings just shy of $10 million ($9,999,815.).
Mott was inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 1998, at the age of 45– the youngest trainer ever at the time he was inducted. Through the end of last year (2024), Mott’s race record shows 5,475 first place wins (No. 7 all time) with total purse earnings of over $353-million ($353,068,837) (No. 4 all time).
Sovereignty is among the horses owned by Godolphin– a global thoroughbred breeding operation and horseracing team founded by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
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