Horse Racing: Should Rules for the Triple Crown Change?

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00:00When hot topics come around that need to be talked about and have to find their place,

00:04this isn't something that just broke just a few minutes ago, but it came out yesterday.

00:08And let's start here, Joe.

00:09And it deals with horse racing.

00:10For the casual sports fan who just likes big events, that's a lot of people out there.

00:15You know what?

00:15I don't really follow the NBA all that much during the regular season, but boy, I like

00:18the playoffs.

00:18I think it's pretty cool.

00:19The Stanley Cup, you know what?

00:21Going through those playoffs, I like to root on my team.

00:23But you know what?

00:24Once we get deeper into the rounds and watch the Stanley Cup finals, you can enjoy that.

00:28Not a huge football fan.

00:29That's kind of crazy to me, but maybe you dip in for the playoffs and the Super Bowl

00:33and it's a big event.

00:33Same thing with college sports, college basketball, and college football.

00:36But for horse racing, once a year, we line up.

00:39And it's similar to golf.

00:39Like, hey, the Masters is on there.

00:41It's pretty cool.

00:41Let's watch it and tune in.

00:42But the Masters, once it's done, hard maybe to say, like, okay, let me sell you the PGA

00:46Championship and the British Open.

00:48Nah, I'm out.

00:48I just like the Masters.

00:49I like the golf course.

00:50It's always there.

00:51Horse racing, we understand this.

00:52Triple crowns are hard to win.

00:54That is the Kentucky Derby.

00:55That's the Preakness, followed by the Belmont.

00:57The one thing that we usually have the luxury of Joe and Erie is we all get excited because

01:01the bigness of the Kentucky Derby, the fashion, the horses we hear about for a couple weeks,

01:05we watch it play out in front of us.

01:07And there is a champion of the Kentucky Derby, which was Sovereignty.

01:10So immediately we go, all right, Preakness is on in a couple weeks.

01:13Can we have a triple crown contender that can at least make it to the Belmont?

01:18And yesterday, news came down that Sovereignty will skip the Preakness and now target the Belmont.

01:23So my question to you is this, as we start here, if Sovereignty's goal is, hey, I want

01:29to win the Kentucky Derby, which is great.

01:31And for the owners, the trainers, you get it.

01:33And I just want to go off into the sunset and make money with studies.

01:37That's great.

01:38You shouldn't be in my term.

01:40You should not be able to skip the Preakness and then parachute back into the Belmont and

01:44say, well, I want two of the legs at that point, make even more stud fees.

01:48If you are in it all the way through, like you can't even joke for me.

01:51And I don't even know if this is a rule or not.

01:54Can you say, I'm not going to run in the Kentucky Derby, but I'm going to run in the Preakness?

01:57Can you actually do that?

02:00Yeah.

02:00And yes, absolutely.

02:02You know, you have to qualify for certain race.

02:06And listen, the problem, Donnie, is that, you know, go back a couple of decades with the

02:13Alidars and the Secretariats and the way horse racing used to be is that these horses, when

02:19they got to the Kentucky Derby and already raced six times in that year as a three-year-old,

02:27it wasn't their second or third or just fourth race.

02:31These horses these days are not bred and they are not raced to be able to go through a race

02:40every two weeks, which is basically what you have to do.

02:43That's not what these horses have been bred to do anymore.

02:47It's basically either one and done or I'll try two of the three legs and we'll see how

02:54that goes.

02:55And listen, it could be a million reasons why money, of course, being, I'm sure, at

03:00the top of the reason list, but there could be a million reasons why they don't want to

03:04go to the Preakness.

03:06It could be maybe it's too much on the horse.

03:08Again, a horse that's run what?

03:10Four times, five times in his life all of a sudden now is going to run three races in

03:15five weeks.

03:16I mean, you're asking them, you're asking a horse to do something and it's much more

03:21risky these days to have a horse do that gauntlet there and expect them to be OK on

03:27the on the outside.

03:29Plus, the money's earning bank.

03:30You won the Kentucky Derby.

03:32So if you're a horse that's bred for longer distances, which they must feel sovereignty

03:37is, then, hey, two out of three legs, still a pretty good payday when it's all said and

03:42done.

03:43But you can't risk a horse if you don't think it's in its best interest in order to be

03:47able to race because the triple crown is alive and well.

03:51Yeah, because and I get that point, too.

03:53It's like I'm not looking at this and like, hey, man, like we came up and the hoof is a

03:57little bit banged up here.

03:58He's got to skip a couple weeks.

03:59Everybody understands that from a human standpoint, right?

04:01Like nobody wants to put an animal in danger.

04:03But I just feel like it's turned into let me just turn this loose because I know I have

04:07a guaranteed profit.

04:08And the only way I don't is, boy, and again, horses are bred differently now where they run

04:13races and they can get hurt.

04:14And it's not like a human being like, OK, I broke my leg.

04:16I'll just go rehab it for three weeks.

04:18Like a broken leg is like a death sentence for a horse at that point.

04:21And I get where they're trying to protect their investment.

04:23But how do we make this better?

04:24Like in the past, like there was a time, Joe, where heavyweight boxing was the king prize

04:30of the world and everybody would watch.

04:32And then it turned into a fallacy because they basically did it to themselves.

04:36Rigging, you know, shots here, avoiding fights, never getting the fights we want to see.

04:40We see all that stuff and other sports do it as well.

04:42Like the NBA, there was a time where everybody played every game unless they were seriously

04:46injured.

04:47Now we don't do that.

04:48It's load management, which again, takes a tax or toll off of the players.

04:51But for the fans, they don't like that in the regular season.

04:54Hey, primetime TNT tonight.

04:56Yeah, the three best players in the games aren't playing.

04:58Oh, are they injured?

04:58No, no, no.

04:59They just decided to take the night off and away you go.

05:01How can horse racing make this better?

05:03Because I understand the old school thought process.

05:05The triple crown is supposed to be hard.

05:07And I get that where it's like, you know what?

05:09You're going to have to race all the way through.

05:10And those are the parameters, which is why it doesn't happen every year.

05:13But if you're just talking about the health of a sport where you want to command interest,

05:17can we make changes by pushing the race back a week or two?

05:21Like I mean, myself would be fine with it because I want to see triple crowns.

05:24I want to see the horses race in each race here.

05:27But is it just too much of the old school mentality?

05:29Nope.

05:30It's the way it's always been.

05:31It's never going to change.

05:32You just can't have a triple crown then.

05:35Yeah, it will.

05:37The problem is, Donnie, is that it's not just one barn, one owner, one situation.

05:42Now you've got syndicates of people who are on the horse and are involved and have a say

05:50into what happens with the horse these days.

05:53And, you know, also, you got to think, if you don't like the track, if you don't think the horse

06:01can win it, then why are you entering it, right?

06:04I mean, that could be the other thing, too, is that if you don't think he can win it,

06:08what you'd rather win the Belmont because you think he's actually bred to come from

06:12that kind of distance.

06:13I mean, it's the longest of all the races.

06:16Maybe that's the race you target.

06:18I just don't think they have enough confidence in the horse here at this point, given the

06:22circumstances that they're going to go ahead and run him in a race that they don't feel

06:26he can win.

06:28Like, just back in the day, being from like the Philadelphia area, Barbaro, Smarty Jones,

06:32like they captivated an entire region for like a month and a half.

06:35They were good enough to win, though.

06:37Yeah.

06:37They were good enough to win.

06:39Because when you sit back and say to yourself, like, oh, my goodness, like, this is so much

06:42fun.

06:43And, yes, horse racing can make a rebirth.

06:44Like, that's what drives the public interest.

06:46I understand that the staunch people that say, you can't change things up.

06:49It's the way it's always been.

06:50But if you want horse racing to survive, like the Triple Crown race is why people tune in

06:54to this point.

06:55And the more people involved, the more money you make, the more eyeballs on it.

06:58You can turn some of these horses into true superstars.

07:01It's just a shame we won't see that even in the Preakness.

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