Owner not wrong

[sekrah]

Nonsense.  We were a combined less than 3 lengths away from having 5 Triple Crown winners the past 15 years.  Sheer luck is the reason we haven\'t had a winner.  The spacing is fine.  It was hard back in those days to win it too.  They went 25 years without a winner before Secretariat.  That we had 3 TC winners in the 70s was a total fluke.

[HP]

Sekrah - this makes more sense than anything else I\'ve heard on this subject.  HP

[slewzapper]

You\'re missing the point. It\'s not about winning the Triple Crown. It\'s about the horses.

I don\'t care how many times the Triple Crown is won, or not won. The post was a response to the notion that if the spacing remains the same that it\'s the same challenge as those who campaigned in the TC 40+ years ago. To believe that is to be in denial over how the game has changed and its consequences to its participants.

Whether a horse accomplishes it or not doesn\'t change the fact that asking for modern-day efforts with old-fashioned spacing leads increasingly to beaten up stars, missing key challengers, and worsens the series overall. It\'s supposed to be the best three year olds facing each other in the spring. When it went to the current spacing it wasn\'t intended to be the survival test to the degree it is today. The downside of holding to traditional spacing is outweighing the accomplishment of winning all three, whenever it happens.

I\'d prefer to see top three year olds running their best efforts against each other in all three races. What we get now are missing challengers and increasingly broken down horses in the finale who have run in all three races.

The mesmerizing thrill of chasing this elusive fantasy is causing increasing collateral damage to the sport, eating its young. What is this, Hunger Games?

It\'ll probably change when we eventually get an Eight Belles-like event with 25 million watching and the Triple Crown on the line.

[sekrah]

They sell these horses for 20-40m and retire them anyway.  It\'s not like they are going to race long after the Belmont even if they exited the TC better than they went into it.

It\'s fine the way it is.

[Coronado98]

I\'m sure the owner would love to see a 4 horse Belmont, it\'s what he is used to seeing in southern California on a daily basis.

[joemama]

Just imagine if one of those horses was Secretariat.  I wonder what the beaten lengths might have been then.

[Coronado98]

Turcotte would have had time to dismount at the eighth pole, wait in the mile long line for $10 beer, get on yet another line to place a bet in the 12th, and then get back on big red to win by 50 lengths.

[slewzapper]

Huh??? They don\'t stick around and one gets paid, so it\'s OK to keep chewing all of them up and spitting them out? Thanks for clarifying your position.

If the Triple Crown as currently run was pitched de novo as a race series in 2014, the spacing would be universally shot down by all aspects of the sport as not good for the health of the horses, optimizing participation in the series and lowering the quality of the latter race (JB has noted before the drop off in performance after a closely spaced race interval occurs in the subsequent race). All the other divisions of racing have rejcted that spacing, despite the opportunity (the relatively pathetic Preakness undercard). It thus fails the test of reasonableness.

But the obsessive quest for just one false messiah and \"tradition\" (defined as whatever yardstick one wants to use - in this case 1969) trumps all that and keeps horse racing\'s head stuck in a dark, dark place.

This quixotic search for the next Secretariat has also increased the possibility for the next Ruffian. Racing will have no defense for that should it occur.