Baltimore – Sovereignty is not running without that start door in Preakness Stakes on Saturday, two weeks after winning the Kentucky derby. However, it is still the talk of Pimlico Race Course this week.
This is because the owners and coaches Bill Mott chose to omit the preakness and with the opportunity of the triple crown due to the short change. It is the second time in four years that the winner of the derby does not participate for that reason, and the fifth time in seven years in general, the preakness continues without a triple crown in the line.
The trend has revived the debate about what, if something needs to change with the triple crown, with ideas that range from more space between the derby, preakness and Belmont bets to add incentives to run in all three until changing the order of the races completely. Like the starting in baseball by launching less pitchers, elite horses now generally have much more time between races, and the situation has put the tradition and modernization of the front sport.
The change of two weeks now feels many around sport as an outdated schedule when the longest spaces are now the norm with an eye towards the wear of the horses and the best performance. The pure blood used to be trained and ran to a much faster interval.
“It is a question that has more on one side,” said Steve Ashmussen, who has won more races than any other coach in North America. “I love how difficult it is to do, which makes it so special. And then it would make it easier? Does it dilute it? That is a great question. And I think it will continue to be debated.”
The debate
He was constantly discussed during the 37 -year -old drought among the Triple Crown Champions affirmed in 1978 until Bob Boffert American Pharoah swept the three races in 2015. Justify Baffert also did so in 2018, and the choir of voices asked for change calmed down.
But then, for several reasons, there has been a triple crown opportunity in the Preakness only twice in the last seven years. The greatest attraction of the middle leg, the anticipation of the possibility, went from being automatic to anything except.
“It’s worrying, and has been worrying for several years,” said Jerry Bailey, a rider of the Hall of Fame that won each of the three races twice and is now a sports analyst at the NBC. “It is completely Flip-Flop of my generation when it was the rule that they were running and the exception that would not.”
Many main coaches, including Baffert, D. Wayne Lukas, Mark Casse and Michael McCarthy have directed a Derby horse in the preakness or Will this year. Others, such as Mott, Chad Brown, Todd Pletcher and Brad Cox, are more reluctant to run the risk.
“We need them in the game,” said Casse, who won the Preakness in 2019 with War of Will and has Sandman this year. “This is important. We want the best horses for our sport.”
When Asmussen won a triple crown race for the first time with Curlin at the 2007 Preakness, he arrived after his horse finished third behind Street Sense and Hard Spun in the Kentucky derby. Curlin, Street Sense and Hard Spun were 1-2-3 in the Preakness.
“We are definitely running in an environment very different from what we were then,” said Asmussen. “Each horse is an individual, every year is different, and they are only unique circumstances.”
