Churchill Downs Incorporated and the New York Racing Association on Monday announced a six-race championship series over a span of five months that includes the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes and a $5 million prize pool, set to begin next year.
The first and third legs of the Triple Crown are scheduled next year for the traditional five weeks apart between May 1 and June 5. A spokesperson for the Maryland Jockey Club said a date for the Preakness next year has not yet been announced and declined comment on the championship series of races in Kentucky and New York.
The Preakness is not included. Note in both 2025 and 2026 the Derby winners skipped the Preakness as they apparently considered it too soon for their horses to recover.
The Triple Crown has been been popular for close to a century. Thoughts about if this new series will replace it in popularity?
Given how few horses actuially compete in all three legs of the Triple Crown, escpecially how many Kentucky Derby champions are immediately withdrwan and put out to stud, I doubt a six-race series is going to attract a lot of top-tier horses.
The last time a horse won the Triple Crown was Justify in 2018. There were 20 horses in the field for the Kentucky Derby, eight for the Preakness and nine for the Belmont. Only three horses ran all three races. There’s never going to be a six-time winner in a single year - looking at the article, I doubt there will even be a single horse entered in all six races - so why bother?
I know why, money. But unless you actually bet on the races, who cares.
This is a tough call, and I say that as a fan of horse racing.
On the one hand, I understand the reluctance of owners and trainers to race their horses too often. Sure, it’s not unusual to see $5000 claimers race four or five days in a 16-day meet at a B-track (the 16 days being spread over six weeks, note), but you think twice about doing that if you’ve got a $100,000 claimer running for major stakes at an A-track. So, though the Preakness is a major stakes race, it’s just too short after the Kentucky Derby for today’s owners and trainers to be comfortable with entering their horses in it.
On the other hand, it is a fact that racing is not as popular as it once was. There was a time when, if you wanted to gamble, it was the only game in town. But that was long before legal and licensed lotteries and casinos everywhere. Those are much easier to play than learning to study all the information in the Daily Racing Form, and drawing a reasonable conclusion as to a likely winner from it.
A racetrack is a business, and like any business, it exists to make money. In a track’s case, it makes money by taking a percentage of every dollar wagered on racing. If fewer people are wagering, the track is making less money than it would like. Some tracks have responded by turning their facilities into “racinos,” where slot machines and table games provide additional revenue, but sometimes not even they can keep the business going: in the last couple of years, Hastings Racecourse in Vancouver and Golden Gate Fields in San Francisco have shut down totally.
With all that in mind, I noted this in the AP item:
Emphasis added by me. Racing needs to create a new generation of fans. I look at myself, and the other regulars at my local track, and though I hate to admit it, we’re all old. If racing is to survive, especially given the business model I described above, it needs new fans, who will wager.
I can see a six-race series working, if it’s done correctly. No horse will win all six races, of course, but it might work if points are assigned for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, most points at the end of the season get a free pass into the Breeder’s Cup. Just an example, but that might work. At the very least, it would build interest over the season, rather than concentrating it over five weeks in the spring.