Steve Haskin's latest: 'Leave Crown Alone'

[King Glorious]

Originally Posted by letswastemoney

You wouldn't be able to compare the races to past Triple Crown races.

A lot of the fun would be lost if you changed the distance

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.