Bob Ford: Triple Crown races need a shot in the arm

Like an elegant, expensive party shunned by the most sought-after invitees on the guest list, the Belmont Stakes will be contested June 5 without either the winner of the Kentucky Derby or the Preakness Stakes among the field.

It will be a starless, minor key ending to the annual symphony of the Triple Crown races, a hushed coda assured when Derby winner Super Saver was unable to repeat his victory on Saturday at the Preakness.

Without the lure of a possible Triple Crown coronation balanced on the outcome at Belmont Park, and with Super Saver and Preakness winner Lookin At Lucky both skipping the grueling 11/2-mile test, attendance for the Belmont is expected to dip even lower than the 52,861 fans who turned out a year ago.

The thoroughbred horse racing industry, for which the Triple Crown series provides the best chance for promoting the game and attracting casual fans, figured out a long time ago that Triple Crown champions - or, at least, the hope of getting one - is good for business.

When Big Brown went into the Belmont having won the Derby and the Preakness in 2008, more than 94,000 fans made their way to Elmont, N.Y. Those who came for a glimpse of history were disappointed as Big Brown was pulled up in the stretch, but they did show up.

What horse racing has not figured out is how to solve the problem, and how to reverse a decades-long slide in popularity due the encroachment of easier gambling options and the here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of its best athletes.

Tossing in a Triple Crown winner now and again won't cure what ails horse racing, but developing and promoting some superstars wouldn't hurt.

To do so, however, there should be changes to the Triple Crown series itself, and there should also be reasonable motivation for owners to keep the best horses, the ones who gain a following among the public, on the racetrack rather than being hustled off to the retirement of the breeding shed.

None of this is a particularly new notion, but horse racing has no mechanism for altering its path on this downhill track. There is no central authority to help modify the game, and the greed for today's money is making tomorrow's paydays less and less likely.

To start, the notion of running the three Triple Crown races (the 11/4-mile Derby, the 1 3/16-mile Preakness, and the 11/2-mile Belmont) in the space of 36 days is ludicrous given the frailty of the modern thoroughbred.

Yes, that is the tradition, just as it was once the tradition of hockey that no one wore helmets and of football that face masks weren't required. Today's thoroughbred is no longer bred for endurance or stamina, but for speed, speed, and speed. A typical racing career doesn't last five, six or seven years any longer, which, because of the emphasis on breeding for speed, is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If a horse is very good, he or she will be retired for breeding purposes after three or four years. If not very good, the horse either breaks down or is retired to a variety of fates. The economics of the sport dictate a winning horse - particularly a horse that wins big races - shouldn't be put at further risk. In 2008, Big Brown was sold into stud for a reported $50 million by his racing owners. Turning down that kind of money for the good of the game doesn't usually happen, and casual fans can't continue to follow their favorites.

By spreading out the Triple Crown races across the spring and summer, there would be less chance of injury to the horses because of overwork and overtraining. Racing lost a potential superstar this year when Eskendereya, a romping winner of two Derby prep Stakes, was scratched days before the Derby with a leg injury and was retired. It was the second straight year the pre-Derby favorite didn't make it to the starting gate.

A more radical idea, but one that also makes great sense, is to run the Triple Crown series for 4-year-olds rather than 3-year-olds, giving the horses time to mature physically before undergoing the grind of training for and racing the longer distances. As it is, a Derby prospect has to be trained rigorously as a 2-year-old, when the horses are the equivalents of teenagers.

When trainer Bob Baffert took Lookin At Lucky from the mix for this year's Belmont, he noted that Lucky is young even by the usual standards. A late-May foal in 2007, the horse isn't even 3 years old, although thoroughbreds are all given a Jan. 1 birth date.

"I want to keep this horse around," Baffert said as he shipped Lookin At Lucky back to California rather expose him to the marathon of the Belmont in three quick weeks.

If you really want a radical idea - and the thoroughbred industry will start using sumo wrestlers for jockeys before it does this - then there should be a lifting of the ban of using artificial insemination for breeding.

The thoroughbred breed requires "live covers," the physical mating of stallion and mare. This is supposed to ensure no mix-up in identification, the purity of a "purebred," and to limit the number of foals that can be sired in a season by a stallion.

All true, but if there were a way to limit the allowable number of artificial inseminations from a given stallion, and to put other safeguards in place, then great horses could have their sperm banked and keep racing.

Imagine a Breeders' Cup Classic this fall, with Looking At Lucky, Super Saver, Big Brown, Street Sense, and Curlin on the track. Maybe even a crafty veteran like Afleet Alex or Smarty Jones. Think fans would be drawn to that as they continued to follow their favorites horses, the ones who never disappeared behind the white fence rails of Kentucky?

There's no question all of this would be tough to figure out, and little question that horse racing has neither the organization nor the courage to do so. More difficult to figure out for everyone in the game, however, will be what to do for a living in 20 years when horse racing is nearly as dead in this country as 24-hour bicycle races.