A serene D. Wayne Lukas sat at the far end of the Pimlico Stakes barn Saturday morning, seeming as unfazed by the imminent running of the 123rd Preakness Stakes as he would be by a walk in the park.

"Oh, I'm always relaxed on Preakness day," he said to an inquiring reporter.

A few feet away, Cape Town, one of two horses he brought to the race, was napping in his stall.

It was in fact, a fairly typical scene hours before a major stakes race, and yet the week leading up to the Preakness ¬ not to mention Preakness day itself ¬ was anything but typical for the historic track a few minutes outside downtown Baltimore.

Two weeks after he won the Kentucky Derby in an upset, Real Quiet came into Preakness weekend as anything but the favorite ¬ this despite the dramatic injuries and withdrawals that have plagued the Triple Crown series thus far.

In just the last few days before the race, Indian Charlie, who had been the Derby favorite, was scratched due to lackadaisical workouts. Then Halory Hunter, the Rick Pitino owned colt trained by Nick Zito, broke his leg during an early morning training run at Pimlico.

With that, Coronado's Quest, the fleet-footed but zany colt trained by Shug McGaughey at Belmont Park, was announced as a definite for the Preakness and immediately became the wagering favorite.

The colt, known for his fractious behavior in Florida during the winter, had last run in the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, which he won handily, but was held back from the Kentucky Derby, because his trainer and owner feared he wouldn't be able to deal with the 140,000 spectators he would've had to run before at Churchill Downs.

"After days of thinking about it, I decided that the Preakness was the best place to go," McGaughey said.

"If he wins, that'll make a bigger impact than the other race we were considering running him in, the Metropolitan Mile, in New York. If he won that, people'd say he just won another race at Belmont."

The announcement immediately made the Preakness a potential two-horse race, between Coronado's Quest and Real Quiet, and a mini-tempest ensued around the stable area, as one trainer after another speculated about how the rambunctious horse would be handled in Baltimore.

Most believed that McGaughey would try to get permission to saddle his horse in a more secluded area than the infield at Pimlico, where the other competitors would be saddled.

Bob Baffert, for one, was ready to protest, contending that certain considerations allowed Coronado's Quest before the Wood Memorial, significantly contributed to his victory there.

"That's an enormous edge," he said.

Like Baffert, trainer D. Wayne Lukas warned that he would not tolerate any special considerations for Coronado's Quest.

"I'm going to saddle [Cape Town] in the exact same spot," he said. "We're all going to play on a level playing field. If he saddles behind a barn, behind an alleyway, I'm going to be there too."

Prior to Halory Hunter's injury, trainer Zito professed to be amused by all the ruckus, saying that as far as he was concerned, he wanted his horse to be as far away from Coronado's Quest as possible.

"I don't want to follow a nut," he said. "If somebody is unstable, I don't want to be near him. As long as they don't give him a head start, I don't have a problem with where he's saddled."

All of that speculation, however, proved to be for naught. On Friday, it was announced that Coronado's Quest would van down from Belmont Park on Saturday morning, arriving at 7 a.m.

Stall number 10 in the Pimlico Stakes barn was filled with fresh hay and raked down for his arrival; then, suddenly, he was pulled from the race at the last minute, his trainer announcing that he had bruised his right hind foot in a training run hours before he was set to head south.

As the temperature began to rise into the mid-90s Saturday afternoon, the empty stall at the stakes barn seemed like the final coda to an ill-fated day.

Then, a transformer located a few blocks from the track blew out, plunging the entire facility ¬ already sweltering ¬ into a plethora of new difficulties just three hours before Maryland's biggest race of the year.

For 45 minutes, there was no power at all to run the betting machines, the elevators or the air conditioning, and while the day's race card went on, the races themselves were timed the old-fashioned way ¬ with stop watches.

Though power was restored gradually over the course of the afternoon, Joseph DeFrancis, Pimlico's owner, estimated that the track lost between $2 million and $2.5 million in wagering and race-related income as a result of the outage.

What's more, many in the sun-baked throng of 91,122 began heading to the gates early. Those who stayed, though, got to see Real Quiet ¬ the horse few believed in before its surprising run in the Derby ¬ come back to win the Preakness, placing him just one win away from becoming the 12th horse in history to sweep the Triple Crown.

As they crossed the finish line after a duel down the home stretch, Real Quiet had a lead of 2 1/2 lengths on Victory Gallop, the colt who also ran second in the Derby and is shaping up as the winner's closest rival.

With the win, trainer Bob Baffert becomes the first trainer in racing history to have a shot at the Triple Crown in consecutive years, having been in the same position with Silver Charm a year ago.

Real Quiet, the 3-year-old son of Quiet American owned by Mike Pegram, a longtime friend of Baffert's, will now shoot for the Triple Crown at Belmont Park on June 6.

For his part, Real Quiet's exuberant, California-based jockey, Kent Desormeaux, did not sound intimidated after Saturday's race.

"The Derby and Preakness are out of the way," he said. "Now, we're messing with history."

Said Baffert, who before the Kentucky Derby judged Indian Charlie to be the more impressive thoroughbred in his stable, "This horse was one of the best-kept secrets.

"In the barn, we always loved him. This is by far the best race of his career, better even than the Derby. He just keeps getting stronger," Baffert continued.