Tom Chuckas on Preakness/TC Spacing

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by Danzig

Well, since a portion of the thirty six years included horses who had no shot to win the tc because they lost the derby or Preakness, I cannot agree. A variety of things can cause the best horse to lose a race. I cannot believe you think it is not that hard to lose. Weather, track conditions, a shoe, a bad break, jockey error...hell, the bid was one of the best ever, he lost because of a bad ride. Riva ridge lost the tc in a sloppy Preakness. Risen star, third in the derb, won the latter two...afleet Alex did the same. Then there's the more recent years with three different winners, and faces scratching mornings of the race.
To blame lack of a crown on spacing is oversimplifying the whole thing. If you had horses most years winning the first two and losing the third, you might have a point.
Horses go to the Belmont about one third of the time with a tc shot. That means two thirds of the time, it was already a done deal and no tc on the line. For as many as you could find who say its spacing, you'd probably find as many wanting to shorten the Belmont...or more.

What I'm saying is that if there is a horse who is a standout in its division, it's not that hard to win 3 races in a row if the horse has plenty of rest between each race. It is obviously 100X tougher to win the TC than it would be for some grade I mare to win 3 in a row running once every 6 weeks. Three year olds are obviously a little more fragile and that is part of it, but the spacing is huge too. The spacing is huge and the distance of the Belmont is huge. I'm not advocating this but if the TC races were once every 5 weeks and the Belmont was only 1 1/4 miles, the number of TC winners would rise dramatically. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.