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 Feel-good coverage of human connections has largely superceded stories about the actual horses in popular media coverage of the classics.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.

[Phalaris1913]

I felt this needed to be said as a follow-up.

The sport of horse racing is stuck in nasty catch-22. Coverage in popular media (newspapers, general sports magazines, etc) is down significantly from what it once was to the point where it is all but nonexistent. I'm not saying this as a general longing for the good ol' days - I say this as someone who, long ago, learned about this sport while creating a gargantuan scrapbook of articles cut out of general newspapers. I wasn't able to subscribe to the likes of the Blood-Horse and Thoroughbred Record (as it was named in those days) until I was 16, years after I started my scrapbook. I would not have been able to create that scrapbook as a horse-crazy little kid today, because the material isn't there.

Newspapers and television are not obligated to carry coverage of anything, let alone coverage of a "sport" which is generally regarded, circa 2007, as one with limited mass appeal which mainly exists as a gambling vehicle. I have no doubt that legitimate readership/viewer surveys done by general media show horse racing as a marginal market. In short, if there aren't enough people who care, they're not going to waste the space/time covering our sport - but without coverage of horse racing in the general media, how are we going to attract new fans?

I don't have a clever answer.

But I have a suspicion that we're not going to get lasting new fans because of human interest stories about "little guy" connections who lucked into the horse of a lifetime and all-consuming obsession about the Triple Crown as if racing barely exists any other day of the year. That might hook a newbie into watching the Derby, but there needs to be a compelling reason to tune in for the Belmont even if the Derby winner lost the Preakness, or to look to see how so-and-so horse is doing now that it's July or August, or to tune in next year, even if last year's publicized "little guy" is back at Nowhere Downs with nothing but a couple of claimers.

I don't have anything against small, "feel-good" connections, but I am convinced that it is difficult for a newcomer to form a sustained attachment to the sport in the absence of any continuity and familiarity of the participants.

[Thunder Gulch]

I want a Triple Crown winner, but I want him to be a genuine star. I rooted against Funny Cide, Charismatic, and War Emblem. Silver Charm would have been fine, as would Afleet Alex, but the one I really wanted recently was Smarty Jones. He was on the verge of absolute superstardom. The Alex crew was going to bring him back as a 4yo, so someone willing to do that would be even better.