A Horse Ran The Preakness Without A Jockey And Didn’t Finish Last

The first leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown was a complete mess. It rained, the favorite nearly caused multiple horses to fall down, and the unofficial winner was disqualified after a lengthy replay review that gave Country House the win at the Kentucky Derby. The results were an enormous swing in gambling money and legal issues that are not quelled, even as the second Triple Crown race went down on Saturday.

And at the Preakness in Baltimore, things continued to be weird. The winner of the Derby wasn’t even there, and another favorite was scratched as well. Then, Bodexpress ran the entire dang race without a jockey on it.

No, really. The horse ran the race without a jockey on its back, and everyone kind of freaked out about it. Here’s the start of the race, in which the jockey on Bodexpress, eats dirt right out of the gate.

Bodexpress, undeterred by the lack of a dude on his back hitting him and steering him to and fro, decided he wanted to get out and stretch his legs anyway, so he kept on running the race. And though he did not do as well as the other horses, the rest encumbered by riders, he did pretty dang well for himself.

Amazingly, it looks like it isn’t even the last horse to cross the finish line, though he was far out of the money. Look at them try to contain this majestic horse.

Technically, Bodexpress did not finish the race and was therefore listed as a DNF. So you could say that he, indeed, did actually finish the race last. But horse racing is currently dealing with the owner of a horse that “won” the Kentucky Derby challenging the results in court and asking for essentially a do-over. The least we could have gotten here was Bodexpress getting a finish in a race he literally ran on his own.

https://twitter.com/zagatam/status/1129889415654969344

Anyway, War of Will won the Preakness. It had a jokey riding it, though, so who even cares.