Bill Mott is doing what he does, and what he’s done is good enough to put the trainer in the thoroughbred racing Hall of Fame. He’s conservative with his horses. Part of that is spacing their races farther apart than a quest for the Triple Crown allows.
Thus came the news Tuesday that Mott is skipping the May 17 Preakness with his Kentucky Derby winner, Sovereignty. There will be no Triple Crown this year, not even an attempt at one. This marks the second time in the last four years that the Derby winner has opted against going to Baltimore, with the other being long shot Rich Strike.
If you thought load management was just an NBA issue, think again.
This is a massive buzzkill for the sport after a compelling Derby, in which Sovereignty rolled past favored Journalism in the stretch. And while it’s tempting to bash Mott and the horse’s owners, Godolphin, for depriving a fringe sport of a marquee event in Baltimore, this isn’t a surprising move.
Godolphin USA’s director of bloodstock Michael Banahan all but set the stage in the post-Derby press conference when asked about the Preakness: “He ran really hard today. And especially when you get a closer from off the pace like that, they have to lay their body on the line a little bit. If he responds well, maybe we look at that, you know? But I don’t want to jump in straightaway. We'll enjoy today. Today was the goal.”
The first Saturday in May was the goal. Not the third Saturday.
This aligns with Mott’s worldview. He simply doesn’t like to run his horses on a two-week layoff, which is the turnaround from the Derby to the Preakness. Of his previous 13 Kentucky Derby starters, only one ran in the Preakness—the very first, Taylor’s Special, in 1984. The others had their next race at least four weeks later, and several of them rested much longer than that.
Mott has been a highly successful trainer with older horses, and one of the keys to that is not pushing them too hard when they’re younger horses. Most have to compete in several races early in their three-year-old season to qualify for the Derby, and the Triple Crown attrition rate runs high.
“As the trainer, you have to deal with the aftermath (of campaigning on the Derby trail) when it doesn't work out,” trainer Chad Brown said a couple of years ago. “And sometimes, it's not pretty. Those horses need time physically or mentally, and it can really cost a good part of your three-year-old year if you swing and miss.”
So instead of hating the player in this instance, hate the game. The Triple Crown calendar has been a problem for a long time to every horseman not named Bob Baffert, and it should be changed.
This is not a new argument—I’ve probably written variations on this column half a dozen times. If horses almost never race every two weeks anymore, doesn’t the calendar need to adjust? Because it’s clear that horse trainers and owners are increasingly unlikely to play the Triple Crown game as it’s currently scheduled, with the Preakness being the primary casualty.
The easy solution is as follows: keep the Derby right where it is, on the first Saturday in May; move the Preakness to the first Saturday in June; then slot the Belmont on Fourth of July. The benefits are obvious. Triple Crown interest is extended beyond six weeks, and horses should have a greater opportunity to participate in each leg (or at least fewer excuses for skipping one).
The Crown would also be clear of the NBA and NHL playoffs, and the NBA draft. July 4 is a traditional sports content desert, with hot-dog eating contests and midseason baseball serving as just about the only offerings. A Triple Crown bid on the Fourth would be the kind of event that grabs New York’s attention, and the rest of the nation’s.
But change is incredibly hard to force in horse racing, with a lack of centralized leadership and different racetrack ownership groups looking out for themselves more than the overall health of the sport. (College sports fans may recognize that dynamic among conferences.) And there is more than a century of Triple Crown history standing in the way as well.
The philosophical argument against altering the calendar is that it would cheapen the accomplishment of winning the Crown. It’s supposed to be incredibly hard to do, which is why only 13 horses have done it. Baffert ended a 37-year drought with American Pharoah in 2015, then did it again with Justify in 2018, serving as the dual counterpoints to those who say it can no longer be done.
But aside from Baffert, it hasn’t been pulled off since 1978. In fact, nobody has even come close since Justify. The 19 Triple Crown races since then have been won by 19 different horses, with a guarantee that it will be 20-for-20 through the Preakness.
In fact, of the 18 winners of those Triple Crown races between 2019 and ‘24, only two ran in all three: War of Will in ‘19 (when he won the Preakness) and Mystik Dan last year (when he won the Derby). Ten winners ran in two of the three legs, and six ran in just one.
We have come a long way since the first Triple Crown was won in 1919. Sir Barton didn’t just win all three legs in a span of 32 days—he won a fourth in between the Preakness and Belmont as well. Today we’re lucky to get a horse that will run twice in 32 days, much less four times—even if it wins the Kentucky Derby.
The breed has changed. The Triple Crown needs to change with it.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Sovereignty Skipping Preakness Signals a Need for Change in Horse Racing Calendar.