Their names spring to mind whenever these iconic stakes are mentioned: Col. Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. and Col. Matt Winn, both synonymous with the Kentucky Derby, and August Belmont, father and son, the namesakes of the Belmont Stakes and its home racetrack, Belmont Park.

For the middle jewel of the Triple Crown, Oden Bowie and Chick Lang left their marks on the historic Preakness Stakes, but the race owes its status as a classic to another name: William Pickersgill Riggs.

Thanks to Riggs’s leadership, racing returned to Pimlico after a multi-year hiatus, restoring the famed track to the sport’s highest echelon as he revived the Preakness Stakes and brought that Maryland feature to national prominence.

Reviving Pimlico

William P. Riggs (Maryland Jockey Club photo)

This sporting visionary was born on Aug. 11, 1864, to Lawrason and Laura Bright Riggs of Newport, R.I. The family, including his six brothers, moved to Baltimore, Md. the following year, and Riggs would put down roots there permanently after graduating from Princeton University in 1885. A lifelong bachelor, Riggs became involved in a number of activities during his life in Baltimore. As part of the city’s society scene, he was a leader in the Baltimore Horse Show Association and was one of the men who formed the Maryland Steeplechase Association in 1898. Seeking a location for racing, Riggs and friends leased Pimlico from its owners to hold short three-day meets featuring both flat and steeplechase races.

Opened in 1870, Pimlico had not held a season sanctioned by The Jockey Club since 1889, when the original Maryland Jockey Club abandoned its license there. The MJC, headed by former governor Oden Bowie, had initially been successful at Pimlico, with races like the Dinner Party Stakes and later the Preakness Stakes attracting good horses from around the East Coast. Competition from a growing number of tracks in the region diluted the number of available horses and the MJC was forced to close up shop. In the intervening decade and half, harness racing and so-called ‘outlaw’ meets went on at the track, but Riggs and his compatriots wanted to restore the track to the good graces of The Jockey Club, headed by August Belmont II. By 1904, they had succeeded.

Riggs and company then made an agreement with the still-surviving members of the Maryland Jockey Club to merge the two organizations. That same year, the Maryland State Agriculture and Mechanical Association purchased Pimlico for $70,000, and then leased it to the Maryland Jockey Club. William P. Riggs became the secretary and spearheaded the effort to grow Pimlico into the racing destination it once was. Once the racetrack was on solid ground, he brought back one of the state’s former fixtures, the Preakness Stakes in 1909.

Building a Classic

After the Maryland Jockey Club gave up racing at Pimlico in 1889, the Preakness was no longer on any of the state’s stakes schedules. In 1890, a race called the Preakness Stakes appeared on the Morris Park stakes list, and then moved to Gravesend in 1894 and was contested there until 1908. These New York editions were not connected with the previous version of the Preakness, run at Pimlico from 1873-1889, until the 1940s. Though the race was back on Pimlico’s calendar, several years would elapse before its conditions and distance settled into what we know it as today.

Preakness day in 2013. (Eclipse Sportswire)

In 1897, the number of racetracks in America was 314; by 1908, that number had fallen to a scant 25, thanks to both overabundance and then the anti-gambling movement of the first decade of the 20^th century. As a reaction to the state’s anti-gambling laws, New York racetracks closed in 1911 and did not reopen again until 1913; during that time, the sport stayed afloat in the United States thanks to tracks in both Kentucky and Maryland, including Pimlico.

William P. Riggs saw how important the state was to the sport and worked to raise the profile of the track’s signature race, the Preakness. In 1918, he announced that the race’s purse would increase from $5,000 to $15,000. So many horses were entered that, for the one and only time in the race’s history, the Preakness was split into two divisions.

The following year, the purse went up to $25,000, and then Col. Matt Winn announced that the Kentucky Derby’s purse also would be increased to $25,000. When Sir Barton won the Kentucky Derby and then the Preakness in 1919, he won $50,000 and put that double on the map. The increased purse money plus Sir Barton’s win brought even more attention to the Preakness, so much so that Riggs happily pitted the Maryland feature against its Kentucky cousin in 1922. Usually run on the last day of Pimlico’s spring meet, the Preakness was scheduled for May 13; usually run on the first day of Churchill Downs’ meet, the Kentucky Derby was also scheduled for May 13. Despite pleas from owners and trainers, neither track would reschedule.

Preakness Stakes day in 2024. (Eclipse Sportswire)

Instead, Riggs raised the Preakness’s purse and then Winn countered, each trying to attract Morvich, the best 2-year-old of 1921. By the time the dust settled, both races had increased their purses to $50,000, and neither had rescheduled. Morvich would win the Kentucky Derby while Pillory won the Preakness, both races about 10 minutes and 600 miles apart. For the 1923 edition, owners and trainers successfully convinced both Riggs and Winn to reconsider the dates for their respective races so that horses could run in both. That led to the Preakness going first from 1923 to 1931, when the Kentucky Derby shifted to the first Saturday in May. By the time Gallant Fox came along in 1930, the Derby, Preakness, and the Belmont had all become high profile enough to be grouped together as the elite achievement we now know as the Triple Crown. Thanks to Riggs’s advocacy and hard work, the Preakness Stakes and Pimlico became an essential tradition in American racing.

William P. Riggs did not live to see Gallant Fox’s Triple Crown; he died from pneumonia in early 1926. To honor his contributions to Maryland racing, Pimlico inaugurated the Riggs Handicap that same year, a 1 ½-mile test for 3-year-olds and older on the dirt. Run on dirt until 1949 and then revived on turf in 1956 through 2000, the list of winners includes Hall of Famers Seabiscuit, Stymie, and Crusader, these legendary victors a fitting tribute to the race’s namesake, a visionary who helped build both Pimlico and the Preakness Stakes into the classics they are today.