Preakness profiles: Term of Art

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Staff Reports

In our Preakness profiles, we look into each of Saturday’s Preakness contenders.

WHO IS TERM OF ART?

A $220,000 auction purchase as a yearling, this Doug O’Neill-trained son of Tiznow’s career-best result was a win in the Grade 3 Cecil B. DeMille contested off the turf at Del Mar last November. He was well-beaten in the major West Coast Derby preps, including a seventh-place finish in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT TERM OF ART

“He’s a strong, long, good-bodied horse, and I always think with those horses, the less traffic they encounter early on, the better,” said trainer Doug O’Neill following Wednesday’s post position draw, in which he drew the 7-hole. “I think 7 will have to be perfect.”

WHY HE COULD WIN

He’s a horse whose connections have been high on him all along; they’ve put him in difficult races repeatedly, and given that they know what to do with a good horse — O’Neill trained Derby winners Nyquist and I’ll Have Another — that all suggests they think he’s one, too. O’Neill makes two changes here that could be consequential, adding blinkers to the horse and replacing jockey Tyler Baze with Jose Ortiz.

WHY HE COULD LOSE

Nothing Term of Art has done in the afternoons suggests he’s this kind. He hasn’t finished better than third, or within a half-dozen lengths of the winner, in four starts this year. He’s gone off at odds of 13-1, 62-1, and 23-1 in his last three starts. His career-best Beyer of 92 will not likely make him competitive here, and the nine starts he’s made are more than all but two of his rivals, meaning that they may have more improvement in front of him than he does.