The Triple Crown, part II: Preakness Stakes

Gorgeous day, down there. But the new wave of douchebags crawling all over the prime-location
bars on the second-floor of the grandstand largely
spoiled the day, for me.

 

The Pimlico beer-game manipulation, precisely as projected:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/horse-racing/preakness/bal-cowherd0515,0,3719788.column

 

I don't think Borel wanted to go the first half-mile in less than 46 and a half seconds. No chance from there.

No Super Saves or Lookin at Lucky for the Belmont.

 

Yep, yep.

 

It'll now be 33 years since the last Triple Crown winner: in 1973, it was considered remarkable there hadn't been a winner for 25 years.

I wonder if maybe spacing the races out by another week (schedule a 3-week gap between the Derby and Preakness) might help, give the Derby winner more rest and bring them into the Belmont fresher.

 

Wayne Lukas makes a good point about the elussive TC: everyone acts like it would be a HUGE deal for racing. Two weeks after it happened it would be biz as usual. Its not like people would suddenly start watching the Breeder's Cup because there was Triple Crown.

I like that its hard, personally. I like that it takes a lot of IFs for it to happen. Eskendereya and Lookin At Lucky probably both had the talent to give it a run this year. But one got hurt and the other got unlucky in the Derby draw and with the weather. That's racing. Super Saver wasn't a legit TC threat. If Pletcher put him in the Belmont, he'd finish 10 lengths behind Ice Box.

It will happen eventually. It probably should have happened with Point Given and Big Brown, two of the best horses of this era. Other horses had chances but those two were just flat out better than anyone. But both had one day when something was wrong, Point Given in the Derby and Big Brown at Belmont.

That's racing.

 

Yeah, kinda like the supposed bump hockey was going to get from the Olympics.

 

Lukas never minds getting his name in the papers.
Back in the '90s, DWL was saying it would be a good
idea to make the Derby only nine furlongs. A bad idea, then and now.

They tried to get cute with Point Given, trying to win
the Derby with a horse only 90% fit. Didn't work.
And once Big Brown ran absolutely out of his mind to
win the Derby . . . by the time he got to New York,
he had nothing left. Given the demands of the individual races, and the spacing, you need to be a terrific horse to win all three . . . which is the general idea.