What a difference two weeks make? Not much. As in the Kentucky Derby, a magnificent horse, Epicenter, was the favorite to win Saturday’s Preakness. As in the Derby, Epicenter placed instead. This time Early Voting, a 5-to-1 entry, crossed the line first. 

Early Voting was far from an 80-to-1 long shot, which was the Derby winner, Rich Strike. Then again, too, the Preakness’s nine entries never yield the kind of extreme long odds that the 20-horse Derby does.

Betting on Early Voting to win did yield a nice enough payday. Moreover, a victory over the field’s most sung steed, Epicenter, who is yet to make those who bet him happy, was quite a feat.   

Epicenter’s arrival behind the winner is not the only similarity to the Derby of two weeks ago. As then, today’s winning horse will skip the next, and final, leg of the triple crown. Early Voting’s owner, Seth Klarman, said that his horse would likely skip New York’s Belmont Stakes in three weeks.

“It’s beautiful when a plan comes together,” Mr. Klarman said after the race, channeling the A Team’s Hannibal Smith. He referred to his decision to skip the Derby and compete in the Preakness instead. And now Mr. Klarman prefers, once again, to rest Early Voting, skip Belmont, and travel instead to upstate New York to Saratoga later in the summer. 

Sense any pattern? Mr. Klarman, who won the Preakness in 2017 with Cloud Computing. Then, as now, he chose to skip the other two legs of the Triple Crown.

Mr. Klarman and his trainer, Chad Brown, seem to favor Pimlico’s middling distance — nine and a half furlongs, or a mile and 3/16 — for running their steeds. It isn’t as short as Churchill Downs, and not as long as Belmont’s arduous mile and a half oval. 

Early Voting’s jockey, Jose Ortiz, made today’s run for the black-eyed Susans look like an easy trot. He may have blocked Epicenter’s path during the race’s final stretch, but not in an illegal manner. All’s fair in love, war, and horse racing. 

Many track denizens, however, are disappointed. With no horse vying for a triple crown victory, they don’t even have a race between the winners of the first two legs, Early Voting and Rich Strike. 

As we prepare for Belmont, then, what’s left? A rematch between the most exciting closer in decades, in Rich Strike, and the Derby and Preakness favorite, Epicenter.

Rich Strike looked frisky after his Churchill Downs win two weeks ago — almost as if he was ready to make yet another trip around the oval. He also proved to be a closer. So the decision to rest him, rather than vie for the Preakness, raised a lot of eyebrows.

Epicenter, on the other hand, always looks like a sure winner,  and anyone who knows anything about horses would favor him at any race he chooses to enter.

And yet.  

Perhaps neither of these two will win the Belmont. Bettors could do no worse, though, than wager on Epicenter to come in second. A Place bet doesn’t pay much, especially not on a horse that will most likely remain favorite to win.

Yet here is an old horse player’s trick for when you are sure of a bet that nevertheless would pay next to nothing: buy a $2 ticket and rather than cash in, frame and keep it as memento.