LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Horse racing insiders once looked at D. Wayne Lukas like he had seven heads when he was the first trainer to publicly push for a radical change to the Triple Crown schedule.
Keep the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May.
Move the Preakness to Memorial Day weekend, creating a 3-to-4 week gap between the first and second legs of the Triple Crown.
Bump the Belmont Stakes into July, on the weekend closest to the Fourth. Make it America’s second greatest horse race (after the Derby). Give the horses four or five weeks before you ask them to run a mile-and-a-half.
People wrote about what Lukas was thinking. Some debated it. But like too many discussions in horse racing, it stalled and disappeared. Racing specializes in explaining why critical change cannot happen.
Go back to quarter-horse racing, Wayne. Leave the Triple Crown to us.
Racing cannot keep ignoring what D. Wayne Lukas knew more than 20 years ago.
The game has changed. Horses are not bred to run three classic races in five weeks. It’s speed, speed, speed, not stamina and an appetite for classic distances.
Owners don’t want to risk diminishing the value of their considerable investments.
The dreary facilities at Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course, which has been crying for a renovation and substantial capital investment for 40 years, are easy to walk away from.
Jockey Junior Alvarado settles in aboard Sovereignty in the paddock before Saturday's Kentucky Derby.
Maybe the quick and deliberate decision by Godolphin Racing and trainer Bill Mott to bypass the 2025 Preakness and focus on the Belmont Stakes with Derby 151 winner Sovereignty will be the tipping point that leads to the changes Lukas suggested.
I’m not counting on it. Racing has no commissioner. Unity is not a strength of the game.
Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby tower over the final two legs of the Triple Crown. The New York Racing Association is renovating Belmont Park and always puts on a good show, especially when a Triple Crown is at stake.
But the Preakness?
Selling the Preakness is as tough as a $2 steak. Without Sovereignty and perhaps the next three Derby finishers, the Preakness will be a $2 steak smothered in last month’s potato salad on May 17.
Get this: I checked the sports web page for the Baltimore Sun, a newspaper that always went gaga over the Preakness.
Two of the top three stories on Wednesday morning were about the Baltimore Orioles. Makes sense. The Orioles are baseball’s biggest disappointment.
But before I could find one Preakness story, I had to scroll past a high school NIL story, a piece about the Navy football team’s tight end and the all-county high school swimming team. I’ll stop there before the embarrassment becomes impossible to believe.
The Preakness needs an intervention, starting with a move back to Memorial Day weekend.
I know that racing traditionalists will howl.
The Triple Crown is supposed to be difficult. Look at Citation’s record in 1948. That colt ran three times in April before the Kentucky Derby, including a race at Churchill Downs four days before the Derby itself.
He won the Derby, he won the Preakness. And he took a detour into New Jersey to win the Jersey Stakes before finishing the Triple Crown at Belmont Park.
We’re talking about a horse who ran roughly once every 2 1/2 weeks as a 3-year-old.
Forget about Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak or Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game. If you want my nominee for the sports record that will never be broken, give me Citation winning 19 of 20 races as a 3-year-old while finishing second the one time he was defeated.
Mystik Dan won the Derby last year. He raced seven times as a 3-year-old.
American Pharoah ended a 37-year gap between Triple Crown winners in 2015. The colt raced twice before the Derby and eight times at 3.
Affirmed was the last Triple Crown winner before America Pharoah. He worked hard. But not like Citation. Four prep races in California before the Derby and 11 races total in 1978.
Godolphin Racing and Bill Mott are as invested in horse racing as any owners and trainers can be. They know what a big deal a Triple Crown is in the game.
But they only needed three days to confirm they did not see the benefit or wisdom of running in the Preakness.
Pass. Hard pass.
Citation and Secretariat are not walking through that door. Horse racing can’t keep pretending these are the good old days. D. Wayne Lukas gave racing a different path decades ago. It’s time for horse racing to quit resisting.
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