Quote:
Originally Posted by Alabama Stakes
Also the Met Mile, which was foolishly moved from Memorial Day, when it was huge, to being just another race on Belmont Day, doesn’t mean as much now.
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I'm not sure that the Met Mile ceases to be huge simply because it is shifted a couple of weeks further into the calendar.
The positives outweigh the negatives with the move. Firstly, in this day of waning public and media interest (no more Budweiser Racing Across America on ESPN), tacking it onto a loaded Belmont Stakes day might be a form of self-preservation. Mega-stables pretty much control the vast majority of top horses and might toss an older horse into such a race if they have a contender for the featured Belmont Stakes. For example, would Hoppertunity show up for the Brooklyn--as opposed to today's Gold Cup at SA--if Baffert didn't have Justify pointing to the Belmont?
Secondly, Belmont can capitalize and highlight the return of the previous year's Triple Crown contenders if they race in big events on the same day as the current year's Classic. For example, prior Belmont winners Palace Malice and Tonalist returned at 4 on the Belmont undercard and took the Met Mile. That might open the door for a casual springtime fan to consider that these horses have careers beyond the Triple Crown...and maybe they'll be yearlong fans instead. Churchill does this with its older horse stakes on their Derby and Oaks days with the Alysheba and La Troienne.
Thirdly, moving the Met Mile fills a decades long gap in the NYRA stakes schedule where there was not an older horse stakes of sufficient importance in the month of June. In the past, they tried to bolster the Nassau County Handicap to fill the void, but it died along with the American Championship Racing Series. The Met Mile in early June fits rather nicely against the up-and-coming Westchester, which is quickly becoming a popular comeback race for the previous season's top horses. This year, Preakness winner Cloud Computing made an aborted comeback attempt, and in prior years horses like Palace Malice, Tonalist, Connect, To Honor And Serve, and Flat Out have used the race as a tune up for the Met and further beyond.