Do you want another Triple Crown winner?

[Phalaris1913]

Originally Posted by dellinger63

From what most have said a TC winner would bring more and newer fans to the sport but IMO it would have more to do with the human connections rather than the horse. People seem to love to have their heart strings pulled and Barbaro was a prime example. The colt was never more popular with new fans than when he was hurt and attempting to make his gallant recovery.

A sheik horse would not have the back story as a horse coming from lower level connections. Give me an owner that cries and expresses emotion with every win coupled with a simple speaking trainer both with more humble backgrounds than being monarchs and we'll have a horse new fans will love. Mrs. Gentry and Carl Nafzger winning the Derby with Unbridled comes to mind.

I think this is one of the problems. Feel-good coverage of human connections has largely superceded stories about the actual horses in popular media coverage of the classics. I suspect that this has to do with a variety of factors: humans are naturally interested in the human element of the story, especially since in the 21st century horses are not a part of most people's day-to-day lives; the horses themselves rarely have particularly good stories at this point in their careers anymore; and there's the idea - not entirely ill-founded - that to hook non-racing people into watching these races, they need human-interest stories to make potential new fans care about the outcome of the race.

However, there's an inherent problem with trying to center the sport on human connections. Aside from the jockeys, they are not participants in the main event. They also do not have a constant presence. Consider, for example, NASCAR. I don't care much and know less about stock car racing, but for a while, I had a favorite I followed casually and I would look each week to see how "my" car did. That's the key. During the season, Dale Jarrett and #88 did something I could follow on a regular basis. That does not happen in horse racing anymore. It's not uncommon for many weeks, even months, to go by - during the active season - between occasions when a horse walks into a starting gate.

But trying to hook people on connections is not a whole lot more successful. What about Mrs. Genter? The 1990 Derby was a great moment in televised racing. And then, two weeks later, the inconsistent Unbridled lost the Preakness to a horse who had soundly beaten him in the Blue Grass. And then he lost the Belmont quite badly. When the Triple Crown is the beginning and end of horse racing coverage in the popular media, there's the end of the story.

There's little season-to-season continuity in trying to hang everything on connections, either - especially if you want to champion "little guy" connections. By definition, such people probably never before had a horse of national importance and it's relatively improbable that they will again next year, and the year after, and the year after that (and if they did, they would no longer be an underdog, but someone to root against). So all those people who got attached to the nice little old lady/the Sackatoga team/the underdog-du-jour will tune in next year for another parade of barely raced horses with marginal credentials on their own merits and a new collection of human interest stories.

I'm not saying that good human interest stories are bad and should be ignored. I'm just saying that it probably hasn't been healthy for the sport of horse racing to further encourage the idea that the horses themselves are here today-forgotten tomorrow, with a shelf life of five weeks or less, by centering coverage on the people, rather than the horses.