By far the weakest coverage of horse racing’s annual extravaganza. Probably a combination of factors…borrowed venue, small field, very little carryover drama, too much politicking behind the scenes. It’s been a strange, awkward time for the Triple Crown, and I’m just glad it’s returning to its proper, thoroughly modernized places in 2027. Hopefully we’ll get that Kentucky-to-Preakness interval worked out by then. (What’s the obstacle here again?)
It didn’t help that Fox split everything up into 3 segments and didn’t even bother to put the name of the event on the DVR listing so I couldn’t even search for it. It’s no secret that football, baseball, hockey, and now soccer are their games and they’re not big on the Sport of Kings. They also don’t have an NBC-style Sports Report, meaning that they had to yammer some stuff about the Yankees completely out of the blue. Secretariat got mentioned in passing twice, which is as sure an indicator of “We have nothing to talk about!” as there is. Hated the music choices. Seriously, blech. They actually freaking played the “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better” song during the Ortiz brothers segment, a song that makes MacArthur Park sound like China Roses. The biggest positive with the Fox crew, honestly, is that they can acknowledge the presence of raindrops without going into full-on Defcon 2 freakout mode, which you know NBC would’ve totally done.
Golden Tempo charged to victory at the end, and ESPN will most certainly be buzzing at a once-unknown female trainer becoming an overnight superstar. Of course there’s going to be speculation if he would have won the Triple Crown, but the trainer knows the horse more than anyone, and there have been way, way too many heartbreaks (timeless classic! 
) for me to accept it as a given.