Quote:
Originally Posted by Betsy
Jon White, on with Steve, suggested moving the SA Derby to June and then taking the Del Mar Derby off the grass and using that as a prep for the Derby in August....but then what do you do with the California horses who are ready to run? I guess they’d have to ship....but then that would defeat the purpose of moving the SA Derby.
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All this talk about having horses ready to run with nowhere to go is one of the main problems in racing. You fit the race schedule to the horse, not the other way around.
The musical chairs isn't really necessary; what is necessary is perhaps some purse adjustments and some revivals. Hollywood Park used to run the Laz Barrera and the Silver Screen ahead of the Swaps. Currently all 3 still exist in CA.
The last 6 winners of the Los Al Derby were: champion Shared Belief, the ill-fated Gimme Da Lute, HOY Accelerate, champion West Coast, Once On Whiskey, and champion Game Winner. Not a bad run for a relatively minor race. Ramp it up a bit purse wise and tie the prep races together and it may return to its full glory from the Hollywood Park days for a 2020 one-off.
Del Mar has been building up the Shared Belief (El Cajon) in recent years (Accelerate, Battle of Midway, and Improbable have been recent winners) and can certainly add something to the purpose and stretch it out to 9f or more. No need to mess with the Del Mar Derby. If they get desperate they can always move the Hollywood Derby to the summer and switch it back to the main track--in fact, Affirmed won both the Santa Anita Derby
and the Hollywood Derby
before he started his TC run.
At any rate, over its history the Triple Crown races have been fairly fluid with respect to their relative positions. The Preakness has been run anywhere from 1-3 weeks after the Derby and the anywhere from 3-4 weeks before the Belmont. During 1945 and other war years, when many tracks were closed and many circuits were consolidated (Saratoga meets ran at Belmont, Arlington ran at Washington Park), the TC was all over the place. In 1945, each race was run one week apart with the Derby starting on June 9. When Gallant Fox won the Triple Crown, the Preakness was run before the Kentucky Derby.
If "tradition" is the motivation for this condemnation of CDI's move, then that's some pretty shaky ground. The people in control of the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes needn't really bother worrying about when the 2020 Kentucky Derby is going to be held. They should just worry about the local factors that might dictate what they can and can't do with their schedules. Common sense says that if they are allowed to run on their scheduled dates, then leave them as is. If Santa Anita is still open in early April, then the SA Derby is going to be run (if for no other reason than the greedy folks at TSG count on SA Derby Day as one of it's main money-making days along with the recent Big Cap Day).
Meanwhile, if I were a TSG lackey and really wanted to stick a fork in Pimlico, I would be looking at this as a golden opportunity to push the Preakness over to Laurel...and then just leave it there.