The last few weeks have seen extensive discussion of the Triple Crown schedule in horse racing. That came after only two entrants of the 19-horse Kentucky Derby field opted to race in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes, which marks both the 150th edition of that race and the second leg of the Triple Crown. With 17 Derby horses, including event winner Sovereignty, skipping the Preakness, that saw remarkable criticism of the Triple Crown scheduling from long-time NBC horse racing analyst Randy Moss in a pre-race segment Saturday:
Here are some of Moss’s quotes from that clip:
“In the 1960s and the 1970s, seven of those years in each decade, the 1-2-3 finishers in the Kentucky Derby all came back and ran in the Preakness. That’s what the Triple Crown is supposed to be. That’s what made it what it is. The Kentucky Derby establishes rivalries, it draws in the people to be invested in it, and then those rivalries continue in the Preakness and the Belmont. The 1-2-3 finishers of the Derby? They’ve only come back in the Preakness now twice in 17 years. The system is broken. There’s an easy fix, but the sport just has to remove itself from that straitjacket of tradition that so many people are in right now that’s holding it back.”
The wider segment here from NBC included a significant range of perspectives on this growing issue. In addition to those lines from Moss, that comprised comments from famed trainers (several supported moving this race a week later for more lag time to let more Derby horses run in the Preakness, but some argued against it), host Mike Tirico (who compared this to switches in baseball to allow pitchers more rest), and Moss’ fellow desk analyst, Hall of Fame jockey Jerry Bailey (who noted that Preakness-organizing track Pimlico Racecourse had expressed support for the idea of a week’s delay, but the New York Racing Association, which oversees the third-leg Belmont Stakes, traditionally run three weeks after the Preakness, had refused to move their date back another week). It also saw inclusion of several newspaper and digital headlines bashing racing’s inflexibility around these Preakness skips, and newly–minted NBC Sports/NBC News personality Steve Kornacki with a segment looking at outrage over Preakness skips from almost 50 years ago.
It’s not hard to see that there’s a big problem here for the Preakness in particular from their traditional date not aligning with the rest most horses are currently given. That received wide coverage around the wave of skips this year, including from Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner, who wrote “If horses continue to opt out of the Preakness en masse, it’s time to consider changing when it is run.” But it’s remarkable to see rightsholder NBC not only acknowledge that with a full segment, but with one where their primary on-air personalities all acknowledged that this is a problem and that a move should be made.