(CNN) — On their face, they would seem as far apart on the sporting spectrum as tiddlywinks and shot put.
On the one end sits college football, the billion-dollar industry that commands attention from August until January. On the other is horse racing, the niche sport that owns a five-week blip of the calendar.
And yet, besieged by the same afflictions of greed, self-interest and a comical inability to work together, horse racing is doing its damndest to similarly mess up its very good thing.
Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, announced Wednesday that the Preakness would be moving from its traditional-third-Saturday-in-May date to the fourth Sunday of the month.
Taken alone, it seems like a good idea. For years, horsemen and horsewomen have argued that the traditional running of the Triple Crown’s second leg, a mere two weeks after the Kentucky Derby, no longer suited today’s equine athletes. Three of the last five Derby winners have bypassed the Baltimore-based race, putting the Triple Crown quest to rest before it even got started.
Except, much like college sports, no single decision happens in a vacuum. The Preakness switch comes two days after Churchill Downs, Incorporated and the New York Racing Association announced a partnership to form a six-race thoroughbred racing series, which includes the Triple Crown’s third leg, the Belmont Stakes.
The Belmont, per the announcement, is holding firm on its traditional run date on the first Saturday in June. Which means that rather than running within two weeks after the Derby to have a shot at the Triple Crown, horses now will need to run 13 days after the Preakness. Worse, in a sport that constantly preaches how it puts the safety of its animals first, horses will be asked to run the longest race (the Belmont at one-and-a-half miles) after the shortest period of recovery.
It is not a switch; it’s a bait-and-switch that still leaves the Triple Crown in peril.
“If you want to win the Triple Crown, we’ll see you in Baltimore,’’ Moore said in a Maryland-thumping news conference, conveniently bypassing the fact that if you want to win the Triple Crown, you also have to go to Louisville and Long Island.
Moving the Preakness isn’t a bad idea. Creating a series isn’t a bad idea. Doing both without the two sides working together? It is preposterous.
The Triple Crown is synonymous with horse racing, as familiar to casual fans as a mint julep or a big hat. Other than the Derby, Preakness and Belmont only one other race – the Breeders’ Cup – pulls in more than $100 million in bets each year.
Dating back to 1919, when Sir Barton won all three races, and through 2018, when Justify became its last winner, it is revered for its difficulty and rarity as much as its history.
In the course of my career, I have often been asked what the best event is I have covered. It’s tricky. I saw Christian Laettner hit the buzzer-beater against Kentucky and watched the US Olympic hockey team win gold in Milan. But I will say that never have I heard a roar like the one that followed American Pharoah from the final turn to well beyond the finish line in 2015 to break the 37-year Triple Crown hex. It was as cathartic as it was euphoric, a din that lasted well beyond the end of the race.
Yet somehow it became a line item in all of this transacting, the greater good lost in the infighting between the three groups (Churchill tried to buy the Preakness’ intellectual property in April, a clear part of Moore’s very loud rebuke that “we cannot control our own future if we don’t own it”) as they jockeyed for position and precious broadcast deals.
It is all straight from the college sports playbook, where backdoor meetings are all about self-preservation. Similarly operating without a commissioner to keep things on track and keep the greater good at the forefront, horse racing entities also solved only for themselves. Had they worked together NYRA, Churchill and the Maryland Jockey Club could have met the call to adjust the calendar in a way that kept their races intact and the Triple Crown viable.
Instead, Churchill (the SEC) keeps its tradition and lines its pockets with additional revenue through the Derby and the series; NYRA (the Big Ten) gets four series races on its tracks and a share of the revenue pot; and Maryland (the ACC) gets to cling to its own small corner of the market.
Lost in all of the self-interest is the only thing that horse racing has going for it.
A Triple Crown can still happen, of course. Some have even argued that this new calendar will work out just fine.
“I think it’s a great idea,’’ Bob Baffert told CNN Sports.
The trainer, and winner of the last two Triple Crowns, believes that the new order keeps the difficulty of winning the Triple Crown alive but, with the space between races, incentivizes the Derby winner to run in the Preakness more.
As for the ask of the Belmont, he contends that the “superhorses,’’ will try it and that winning two legs makes it harder to bypass the third, as opposed to a Derby winner who can easily skip out on the Preakness.
Maybe he’s right, though recent history would indicate otherwise. And really, it all could have been fixed with just a little teamwork.
Instead, horse racing officials decided to follow the college football route and think only of themselves.
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