[QUOTE=Lori B;7614199]
There is talk in Maryland of pushing back the Preakness a couple of weeks. As I understand it, the organization of that race is completely in the hands of Pimlico and Maryland’s Jockey Club. If the Preakness were pushed back, NYRA would have really no choice but to push back the Belmont as well.
The races could continue to be at their same respective distances. The time intervale between them would then be a month apart.
Would that really be such a violation of the holy order of things?
It would diminish the value of skipping the first, or first 2, races if the interval were a bit longer, but would it really cheapen the accomplishment of winning all three?
I don’t see it.
The modern time interval between races and length of each race have been the same since 1931, but there were great variations in the order and the length of the races in the decades before that, including years in which the Preakness preceded the Derby, and the Belmont preceded the Preakness (Quel horreur!).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belmont_Stakes#Evolution_of_the_Triple_Crown_series
So, change has in fact happened, and catastrophe didn’t ensue.
Therefore, squalling “but it should never change – change is terrible – oh my god you hate amurrica and horses if you want it to change” is not in fact an argument. There has been change in this race series, just not for 80 years.
Increasing the amount of time between the races would have a desirable effect (reducing the advantage of horses who hadn’t raced in prior Triple Crown races) without changing the specific challenge set by each race, or trying to inscribe restrictions on the entire set of races.
What’s not to like? It seems like a sensible and moderate improvement to me.
(going away to let the shrieking and whinging start)[/QUOTE]
IMO, then all subsequent winners, if any, of the revised schedule would have to have asterisks to explain that the series had been made easier. If the schedule has been the same for 83 years and all of the previous TC winners since 1931 have been able to cope with that schedule, what’s wrong with modern horses that they can’t? If anything, the current schedule ought to be an incentive to breed and train horses who won’t die with 3 races in five weeks. Certainly the gap of twenty five years between Secretariat and Assault means that the schedule was just as hard for the elders as it is for the current crops. But then came the magic of the 70s and the difficulty got forgotten.
If it wasn’t broken in the past, it ain’t broken now and doesn’t need fixing.
