Napoleon Solo, who went off at 7-1, cruised past the fading race favorite Taj Mahal (9-2) at the top of the Laurel Park stretch and fended off Iron Honor and Chip Honcho to take the 151st Preakness in style under jockey Paco Lopez, blowing away three of his primary combatants in the last three-sixteenths of a mile with great brio. It was a thrilling, big run, deserving of a Triple Crown champion, with the game roan colt holding off an oncoming Iron Honor by a length. It was the first Preakness victory for both trainer Chad Summers and jockey Lopez.

The winner paid $17.80 on a $2 bet; Iron Honor paid $9.20 in place; Chip Honcho paid $8.20 in show. The $1 trifecta paid a tidy $597.10.

Taj Mahal, the local favorite who had trained and won at Laurel, began his fade as Napoleon Solo worked by him, and he finished a lackluster tenth. The “money” finishers, in descending order of magnitude, were: Victor Napoleon Solo, who will walk away with $1.2 million; place horse Iron Honor, who earned $400,000; show horse Chip Honcho raked in $220,000; Ocelli brought his late-running Derby style to finish fourth and will take home his small slice of $120,000; and Riley Mott-trained Incredibolt, who finished fifth, will return $60,000.

Pictured below coming into the first turn after the start of the race, Taj Mahal, third from the right toward the rail, with Sheldon Russell up in the light blue silks bearing the post position #1, can be seen taking the early lead. At this point before the first turn, the eventual winner Napoleon Solo, third from the left in this shot, runs slightly off the fast pace two lanes toward the outside (from the leader). The roan colt is not just recognizable in the starting crush by his distinctive grey coat, looked at head-on, he’s easily seen by his bright royal blue padded noseband and the gold square on the black blinders whose fabric spans his forehead. The #10 post position number is just visible on Paco Lopez’ right arm.

Race favorite Taj Mahal’s career is by no means over as a result of his ignominious fade to tenth. At work was simply his immaturity. He faded badly because it’s the fourth race of his short life, and because the talented colt requires what most three-year-olds need, namely, a solid dose of remedial study in tactical school. A fade like this does not augur well for the colt to take on the longer Belmont in three weeks’ time, with its inevitably more challenging field. But he can still have a great summer and fall.

Laurel’s track can be tricky, and that fact played a small but important part in reducing Taj Mahal’s options. Obviously, he broke from the rail hole with a crush of thirteen horses thundering down upon him. The crush was intensified because the oval at Laurel is slightly shorter than that of Pimlico, so that, for the one-and-three-sixteenths-mile-long Preakness, at Laurel, the starting gate had to be moved about a football field closer to the first turn than it would have been at Pimlico. Specifically, at Laurel, the distance from the gate to the first turn is a bit over 700 feet, which is to say, not just short, but damn short, and pointedly so for a field of fourteen. If you’re a front runner such as Taj Mahal, getting out from under that wave of contenders with a fast start is what you want.

Once out front, however, the colt simply could not be settled into a more reasonable pace. That was his, his jockey’s and his trainer’s tactical failure. Solo’s wholly unchanneled, boisterous, adolescent-Thoroughbred desire for speed — the qualities for which he’s bred — emptied his tank almost precisely at the mile mark with a ton of race left to run. His blistering fractions tell that tale. Taj Mahal ran his first quarter mile in 22.66 seconds and hit the half-mile at 46.66. He did the mile in 1:38.55 and had absolutely nothing left by the time Napoleon Solo and Paco Lopez found him at the top of the final three-sixteenths.

Thus the 151st Preakness narrative is a bifurcated one — as intense, historic Triple Crown races often can be, simply because of the naturally patchwork array of immature young talents being introduced to distances longer and competitors tougher than any they have ever faced. On May 16 at Laurel, on the one hand, there was a spectacular run brought. And on the losing side, a talented, inevitably overplayed, front-running gambit.