It’s Saturday afternoon, and Shug McGaughey sits placidly in a chair in the shedrow of barn 20. Intent on his Blackberry, he seems pleasantly oblivious: to approaching visitors; to an impending storm making itself known in stirring winds and scudding clouds; to a tempest of another kind, one created by the media as he gets ready to take a shot at the Preakness and at making racing history.

When he finally looks up, he is, perhaps surprisingly after the last week, affably inclined to talk, even when the name of That Other Derby Horse is brought up.

“I was looking forward to going to Pimlico with Easy Goer,” he says, “because we didn’t have any comparison. Was Sunday Silence that much better, or did we just not run our race?”

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