People are talking about the Triple Crown, but not in the way that many in horse racing would prefer.
After the announcement Tuesday that the connections of Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty have opted to skip the Preakness Stakes on May 17, spoiling any slim chance of a Triple Crown sweep this year, hard questions are being asked about U.S. racing’s centerpiece series.
What does it say about the Triple Crown if one of America’s great trainers, Bill Mott, and the world’s leading breeder-owner, Dubai-based Godolphin, choose to bypass the second jewel to wait for the Belmont Stakes on June 7 and gear up for big races in the summer and fall?
Are the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont due for a change if the format in place for the past 56 years is too arduous for a colt whose handlers want to “look long-term,” as Mott put it after Sovereignty and jockey Junior Alvarado upset Journalism and Umberto Rispoli in Saturday’s Derby?
The view here is that there’s a case to be made for changes, but the reasons aren’t about the Triple Crown per se.
It’s important to know a few things about the Triple Crown.
To begin with, the Derby, Preakness and Belmont are separate events, inaugurated, respectively, 150, 152 and 158 years ago. Not until a few years after Sir Barton completed the first sweep of the three major races for 3-year-olds in 1919 did writers begin calling it a “triple crown,” and even when Gallant Fox completed the second in 1930 the phrase with capital letters still wasn’t yet ritualistically used in newspaper coverage. The three events weren’t originally meant to combine for a test of thoroughbred greatness or as the key racing-industry publicity machine that it has become. They’re significant individually as well as collectively.
That’s why, for most real racing fans, it’s annoying that the public is assumed to tune out the Preakness and/or Belmont if a Triple Crown isn’t on the line – baseball fans don’t leave once there’s no chance for a no-hitter, and NFL fans don’t lose interest in the season if no team is going undefeated.
Also, it’s important to realize that the debate about whether to make changes in the series’ current format has been going on for decades, ever since new breeding strategies began to de-emphasize stamina and sturdiness and new training methods began to make horses start racing later and compete less frequently. Top trainers and voices in the sport have called for shortening the 1 1/4-mile Derby, 1 3/16-mile Preakness and 1 1/2-mile Belmont, and widening the two- and three-week gaps between them. Those calls have not let up as, now, five apparently healthy Derby winners in seven years have missed the Preakness (two of those having to do with a disqualification and the COVID pandemic).
Those calls have lost some steam, though, since American Pharoah broke a 37-year Triple Crown drought in 2015 and Justify became the 13th Triple Crown winner in 2018, those horses showing that the best modern thoroughbreds can overcome the old hard conditions.
Finally, for those who would like to see more serious Triple Crown bids and successful sweeps, it’s important to see that this wouldn’t necessarily happen if changes made it easier for a Derby winner to run in the Preakness and a winner of the first two legs to run in the Belmont. Changes would make it easier for other good horses to run too. In many years the challenge for any one horse would get harder.
This is not to say changes wouldn’t be wise. It is to say if changes are to be made, they should be made because the people who run the Preakness, in Baltimore, and the Belmont, in New York, think it’s beneficial to those individual races for a new plan to be worked out.
The Preakness and Belmont would be stronger if more of the best healthy 3-year-olds were running, whether or not they include a Triple Crown prospect in a given year. Then it would be easier to tell your non-racing-fan friends that those events are worth at least five minutes of TV-watching time.
Because of changes in sports and media that are mostly beyond the racing industry’s control, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and Belmont in some years have remained prominent while other impressive things happening at American tracks have slipped out of the spotlight.
The solution to the loss of attention isn’t to try to create more Triple Crowns bids, it’s to try to create more awareness of those “other” stories and the fun of trying to predict what will happen next. (Fun indeed: When you’re right, they hand you money.)
The 150th Preakness, a week from Saturday, would be better if Sovereignty and Derby third-place finisher Baeza weren’t already declared out. But it still has at least two Derby horses (second-place Journalism and 16th-place American Promise, the latter seeking trainer D. Wayne Lukas’ eighth Preakness win); Wood Memorial winner Rodriguez, trying to give Bob Baffert a record-extending ninth Preakness; and, as of Wednesday morning, as many as seven other horses with stakes credentials listed as probable or possible entrants. As always, Preakness handicappers must figure out if horses like Journalism, who ran well in the Derby, will like the new conditions and tactical dynamics or if other horses will thrive.
The field, post positions and morning-line odds will be set Monday.
If people want to talk about the state of the Triple Crown, tell them its future is a rich topic for debate this year, but so is the Preakness in any year.
Follow horse racing correspondent Kevin Modesti at X.com/KevinModesti.
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