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Originally Posted by King Glorious
You are aware that of the 11 TC winners, only the last three have won it under it's current format aren't you? Some winners won it when they had to run the Preakness a week after the Derby. I think one won the Preakness four days after the Derby. Some won it when the Belmont was only two weeks after the Preakness. Some won it when it was four weeks after the Belmont. Perhaps if you had given Smarty Jones or Real Quiet an additional week of rest before the Belmont, they too could have won it. Perhaps if you had made some of those that won the Belmont four weeks after the Preakness instead run it two weeks later, they wouldn't have won. It's sort of misleading to talk about all the tradition when it's already been changed several times and only the last three have won it the way it's currently set up.
It's still my contention that a shorter race is going to be harder to win. I believe that if the Derby were 9f, we'd have more horses that fit the conditions of the race and were logical contenders. This would be even more true for a 10f Belmont. In any race where you have more logical contenders, more legitimate threats, that race is going to be harder to win, not easier. It may be a little easier to run but harder to win because more horses are capable of winning and therefore you margin for error is much smaller. Personally, I'd much rather see the races become more of a combination of speed and stamina than what they have started to become lately and that's the best 9f outlasting the other 9f in a crawlfest to the finish. At the end of every Derby, you usually only have 1-2 horses that are still running at the end. In the Belmont, we are lucky to get one.
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yes, it's true that there have been changes over the years...the preakness used to be before the derby-the derby used to be in mid-week. but the belmont has been run at 12f since 1926, so it's the other races that have changed more recently.
the argument isn't that it's been changed before-the argument for changing it from most seems to be to make it easier to win. everyone knows that most horses kept from winning the tc have been hamstrung by the belmont. thusly, if you change the belmont, you have more t.c. winners. yippee. making it easier, imo, is not a valid argument for change. after all, if it was easy, anyone could do it-it would no longer take a special horse. so what's the point in having it at all?
i agree with haskin. better to do without a tc winner than to dumb it down.