The thought of a Kentucky Derby winner bypassing the second leg of racing’s Triple Crown used to be unthinkable.
And yet here we are in 2026, reacting to Golden Tempo skipping the Preakness Stakes (G1) to prepare for the Belmont Stakes three weeks later with something closer to a collective shrug than righteous fury.
Three of last five Derby winners have skipped Preakness
Maybe that’s because racing has seen this before. Three of the last five Kentucky Derby winners (Rich Strike, Sovereignty and Golden Tempo) have bypassed the Preakness. Five of the last eight Preakness runnings have not included the Derby winner at all. The pandemic-disrupted 2020 Triple Crown scattered the races across the calendar like loose change, with the Belmont run first, the Derby second, and the Preakness arriving months later.
Spend a BuckThe old order already feels somewhat negotiable.
Uproar in 1985: Derby champ Spend a Buck skips Preakness for bonus
But if modern racing fans want to understand the moment the sport truly realized “business as usual” was no longer guaranteed, they should revisit 1985 and the uproar surrounding Spend a Buck.
Technically, Spend a Buck was not the first Derby winner to skip the Preakness by choice. Gato Del Sol had done it three years earlier.
A $2 million bonus lures Derby winner to New Jersey, not Maryland
But Spend a Buck changed everything.
Because this was not about rest, recovery, distance preferences, or long-term planning. This was openly, unapologetically about money.
And not just a little money.
Newly reopened after an enormous rebuild following the devastating 1977 fire that destroyed the original facility, Garden State Park was determined to announce itself in spectacular fashion in 1985. New Jersey financier Bob Brennan unveiled an audacious bonus: $2 million to any horse capable of sweeping Garden State’s major preps, the Kentucky Derby, and the Jersey Derby.
At first, the bonus looked more promotional fantasy than legitimate threat. Then the right horse arrived at exactly the right moment.
Spend a Buck, a son of Buckaroo purchased for just $12,500, developed an immediate fondness for the Cherry Hill oval. After disappointing as the favorite in his seasonal debut, he exploded in the Cherry Hill Mile, bounding straight to the lead and widening throughout to win by 10 1/2 lengths in 1:35 2/5.
His next start was even more astonishing.
Again controlling matters from the outset, Spend a Buck demolished the Garden State Stakes by 9 1/2 lengths while stopping the clock in 1:45 4/5 for 1 1/8 miles — just two-fifths of a second slower than Secretariat’s world record.
Spend a Buck’s DerbyThen came Louisville.
Spend a Buck turned the Derby into a front-running exhibition, dictating the pace every step of the way and winning decisively. Suddenly, the impossible bonus was no longer hypothetical.
It was sitting there waiting.
With $2.6 million on the line — the $2 million bonus plus the Jersey Derby purse — owner Dennis Diaz faced a decision that, at least financially, barely qualified as difficult.
So he skipped the Preakness.
And racing absolutely erupted.
What about Triple Crown tradition?Spend a Buck became the horse that forced the sport’s establishment to confront an uncomfortable reality: tradition could lose a bidding war.
The outrage carried an unmistakable undertone of cultural and regional disdain. “These are Calder people,” one racing executive sniffed to me at the time, the implication being that racing’s Florida outsiders had violated one of the sport’s unwritten social codes.
But from Diaz’s perspective, the decision was simple logic. Why chase immortality when a fortune was guaranteed elsewhere?
The Triple Crown had always relied upon a kind of shared agreement — an understanding that Derby winners would continue on to Baltimore because that was simply what Derby winners did.
Spend a Buck exposed how fragile that assumption actually was.
“You can say all the good things about him, you can say all the bad things about him, but when Bob Brennan put in that bonus in 1985 and convinced Spend A Buck to skip the Preakness, it woke up the Triple Crown races,” said Bob Kulina, who retired in 2017 after 45 years as part of Monmouth Park’s management team. “It changed racing as we know it and brought the game into modern times.”
He was right.
Forget Triple Crown magic, it’s all about economicsModern racing is now built around selective campaigning, spacing races, protecting stallion value, and targeting specific opportunities rather than automatically following tradition. Owners and trainers routinely make decisions based on economics, longevity, and scheduling rather than sentiment.
In many ways, Spend a Buck saw the future before the rest of racing did.
That does not mean fans have to like it.
Part of the Triple Crown’s enduring magic is its compressed difficulty: three races, five weeks, no excuses. Every time a Derby winner skips the Preakness, the series loses a bit of connective tissue that once made it feel like a single sweeping drama rather than three separate events.
But if Golden Tempo’s decision feels less shocking than Spend a Buck’s did four decades ago, that may be because racing already learned this lesson once.
And it learned it the hard way.
Notable Kentucky Derby winners who skipped the Preakness since the recognition of a Triple Crown in the 1930s:
2026 — Golden Tempo (rest for Belmont Stakes)2025 — Sovereignty (rest for Belmont Stakes)2022 — Rich Strike (rest for Belmont Stakes)2021 — Mandaloun (declared Derby winner later due to DQ)2019 — Country House (illness)1996 — Grindstone (injury)1985 — Spend a Buck (ran in Jersey Derby 9 days after Preakness for bonus)1982 — Gato Del Sol (rest)1955 – Swaps (injury)1954 — Determine (rest)1952 – Hill Gail (injury)1951 — Count Turf (not nominated)1938 — Lawrin (not nominated)
Jenny Kellner is an award-winning journalist and teacher who has covered thoroughbred racing for years. As a reporter for both United Press International and The Associated Press, her work has appeared in publications and on websites around the world. Jenny has also written for The New York Times, the New York Post, Newsday and Sports Illustrated.
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