HORSE RACING

REMARKS: A field of 9, 10 or 11 3-year-olds is expected to contest the 113th running of the Preakness, the middle race in the Triple Crown series, Saturday at Pimlico.

The group includes eight horses from the Kentucky Derby--Winning Colors, the winner; Forty Niner, who ran 2nd; Risen Star, 3rd; Regal Classic, 5th; Brian’s Time, 6th; Cefis, 8th; Private Terms, 9th, and Din’s Dancer, 13th. Probably joining them will be Sorry About That and Finder’s Choice, who runs as an entry with Private Terms, and possibly Once Wild, whose handlers will make a decision on Wednesday.

Never before have as many as eight Derby horses come back to run in the Preakness. This is traceable to two factors: The persistent theory that Winning Colors, only the third filly to win the Derby, is vulnerable, even though the Preakness is 110 yards shorter for the speed-loving roan; and the existence of a $1-million bonus for a horse who runs in all three Triple Crown races and accumulates the most points for high finishes. Last year, even though Alysheba won the Derby and Preakness, Bet Twice still won the bonus for finishing second in the first two races and then winning the Belmont.

Din’s Dancer, who still may not run, doesn’t have a jockey assigned as yet, and on Monday one trainer, Jim Day with Regal Classic, was sent scrambling for a rider when Laffit Pincay backed out. Day wound up giving the mount on Regal Classic to Jorge Velasquez, who won both the Derby and the Preakness with Pleasant Colony in 1981.

Day did not appear to be happy about losing Pincay, who has never won a Preakness but has one Derby and three Belmont wins. Pincay told Day that he had a commitment to ride Sheesham on Saturday in a $75,000 stake at Hollywood Park.

Pincay rode Regal Classic for the first time in the Derby. A couple of days ago, Day started getting the feeling that Pincay might not be available.

“Last week, Laffit was happy as a clam to ride,” Day said. “There are a lot of good riders around, but I hate to keep switching jockeys.”

The Preakness will be Regal Classic’s fourth race of the year and Velasquez will be his fourth rider.

Other riding assignments are Gary Stevens on Winning Colors, Pat Day on Forty Niner, Eddie Delahoussaye on Risen Star, Chris Antley on Private Terms, Angel Cordero on Brian’s Time, Jose Santos on Once Wild, Eddie Maple on Cefis, Kent Desormeaux on Finder’s Choice and Randy Romero on Sorry About That.

Forty Niner and Cefis give the Preakness a second betting entry. Trainer Wayne Lukas was tempted to run Tejano as an entry with Winning Colors, but has decided against it.

“It’s for the same reason that we didn’t run the two of them in the Derby,” Lukas said. “We feel that Winning Colors is so good that there’s not much point in probably beating one of our other horses with her.”

Because his red-eye flight from California was unable to land on time in New York because of fog Monday, Lukas missed Winning Colors’ last workout before the Preakness. Winning Colors worked a half-mile in :47, a better move than she had before the Derby, and she will be shipped by van on Wednesday to Pimlico, where she will just gallop over the track prior to the race.

Another Preakness dropout was welcomed by other trainers, who feared that an inexperienced horse might prevent a cleanly run race. The owner of Feisty’s Sky, on the advice of his trainer, decided not to bring the Arizona- bred to Baltimore. Feisty’s Sky made his first start ever last Saturday, running sixth in an eight-horse field of maidens at Turf Paradise.

One Preakness starter, Sorry About That, will run on an anti-bleeding medication because he bled in his last start. Brian’s Time will have blinkers added and Cefis will wear a different, V blinker, which might help him see horses around him better.

“I waited too long to put blinkers on Proud Truth,” said John Veitch, who also trains Brian’s Time. “I was tempted to run him with blinkers in the (1985) Derby, and I think he would have run better with them.”

The next four races after the Derby, Proud Truth wore blinkers. The colt won all four, the last the $3-million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Aqueduct.

Advisory panel for The Times’ Triple Crown Ratings: Lenny Hale, vice president for racing at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga; Frank (Jimmy) Kilroe, vice president for racing at Santa Anita; and Tommy Trotter, racing secretary at Gulfstream Park.

TRIPLE CROWN RATINGS

Career Horse S 1 2 3 Earnings 1. Winning Colors 7 6 1 0 $1,081,350 2. Forty Niner 12 7 4 0 1,021,880 3. Private Terms 8 7 0 0 742,328 4. Risen Star 9 6 2 1 315,425 5. Proper Reality 6 4 0 0 382,840 6. Brian’s Time 9 3 1 1 391,629 7. Regal Classic 11 4 4 2 848,863 8. Seeking the Gold 7 4 2 0 260,430 9. Tejano 14 5 2 3 288,129 10. Cefis 16 3 4 1 226,477