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The Preakness is the shortest of the races and usually knocks distance horses from the Triple Crown. It's really hard to get a horse that can both outlast the speedballs and go faster than them. It's why this is such a hairy deal for the thoroughbred world... not just the owners and trainers and jockeys, but also for all the breeders. A Triple Crown winner is very good for the sport, cranks up interest in more people and keeps the tracks open. So we gotta root for Animal Kingdom today.
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Damn.
I feel my future as a racing heiress slipping away from me. Usually racing does really, really well in tough economic times. People want to go get some scratch from casting their divination sticks on the racing form, but, well, we're much lazier these days and there are all those screaming slot machines at all the indian casinos that don't require all that mental exercise.
The more tracks that close due to loss of betting action, the less chance there is our horses will sell for anything, or be able to get out there and win races either. It's really heading off toward only the immediately monster talents will have tracks to run on.
I'm going to look at this as some impetus for the Jockey Club to reconsider the notion of opening up the stud book to get sturdier bloodlines into this... OR to start requiring horses be older and sounder before they are allowed on the track at all.
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Say, did you notice those HAARP signatures all over Animal Kingdom's saddle pad during the race? Can we call the judges back on this?
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