JC / Railbird

Triple Crown

Last Word (This Year)

NYRA’s Martin Panza on why he’s not having conversations about changing the Triple Crown schedule by moving the Belmont Stakes into July:

“Right now if you look at the Triple Crown, a month or three weeks before the Derby is when the preps end and there’s really not another big 3 year-old race until a month after the Belmont.

“I’m not sure the rest of the tracks in America would be willing to give us a 4-month break with no big 3-year-old races and that’s what you would be asking for. I just don’t see how that could happen.

“It’s a much more complex situation than just those three races …

“And anything I do at Belmont, I’m also very conscious of not wanting to affect Saratoga. I’m trying to complement Saratoga, not hurt Saratoga.”

Posted in Racing on July 17, 2014 / Tagged Belmont Stakes, Martin Panza, NYRA, Racing Calendar, Saratoga, The Glamour Division, Triple Crown

The Calendar

Bob Ehalt on tinkering with the Triple Crown schedule:

Moving the Belmont Stakes to July will not help NYRA. If anything it will turn June into a dead spot on the NYRA calendar and force it to conduct its biggest race of the year during a period of time most people in the New York-area associate with beaches and vacations.

Yes. Also — and this is something I haven’t seen addressed elsewhere — how would running the Belmont Stakes and its traditional undercard races on the first weekend in July affect Saratoga stakes, especially the Travers? Move the Belmont, and the glamour division loses its annual 11-week freshening.

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I’m going to keep this short, because otherwise I’ll get all gushy and emotional — today marks the 10th anniversary of Railbird. I couldn’t have imagined the adventures and friendships that would emerge from that first impulse a decade ago to start blogging about horse racing, and I couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who’s visited or followed this site since, or to everyone I’ve had the pleasure of meeting or working with because of it. Thank you.

Posted in Racing on June 17, 2014 / Tagged Triple Crown

Dissipated

Dick Powell:

No matter what the reason for California Chrome coming up empty when it counted, I am convinced that had the Belmont been run a week earlier, two weeks after the Preakness instead of three, he would have won since he was full of energy then. I felt the same way with Funny Cide and Smarty Jones who also looked great the week before but came up short on the big day.

Running the Belmont two weeks after the Preakness would definitely not be traditional: One of the most striking things in Natalie Voss’ report on the race schedules of the 11 Triple Crown winners is that the Belmont is consistently three to four weeks after the Preakness. Citation won a race between the two, but his Triple Crown season stretched 42 days. Assault, the only horse to win the Triple Crown in 28 days, had three weeks between the two races.

Related: Matt Hegarty writes about the proposal to increase the time between Triple Crown races to four weeks. “Plainly stated,” he asks, “is it worth it for the racing industry to risk the significance of the one event that the entire sporting world rallies around when there is no evidence that the public is clamoring for change?” Of course not! What makes me hopeful that this scheme will fizzle for another year is that NYRA just set a record, handling more than $150 million on their new mega-Belmont Stakes day.

Posted in Racing on June 13, 2014 / Tagged Assault, Belmont Stakes, Citation, NYRA, Racing History, Triple Crown