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Originally Posted by Cannon Shell
I happen to think that Smarty Jones or any horse winning the Triple Crown will actually hurt the sport in the long run. I feel this way simply because they would retire the horse at the first sign of anything going wrong (like losing) which would probably turn off more mainstream fans than ones that would be gained. If the owner of the winner happened to be one of the mega rich, the sport would become fodder for mainstream columnists to tee off on the greed of the sport (a lot of which would be true).
Plus as i have stated before, fans that dont bet arent not really doing much to help the sport because 99% of the income is generated by betting. Maybe you could make the arguement that fans would eventually start to bet but that seems unlikely. Realistically mainstream's attention span is probably too short for horseracing.
The Triple Crown season is great fun and the Derby run up is probably the most interesting time of the year for horseracing in general. But the underlying issues that trouble the sport have almost nothing to do with an individual horse winning the Triple Crown.
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having a tc winner would drive down ratings and excitement in the first few years after. no one would expect it again too soon--the excitement right now is in the hoping. if we have a derby/preakness winner this year, just think how huge the belmont would be. but if we had a tc winner this year, next year wouldn't make a blip on the screen.