Way back when we watched grainy, black-and-white TV and got our news in bundles of paper thrown onto our muddy front lawns, our favorite racehorses used to run in all three Triple Crown races.
The hazy images bring to mind a man named Art Linkletter. He was a gentle TV host who toted a microphone that made him look like a verger with a mace. He spontaneously interviewed children for about 10 minutes every weekday. His most famous line was, “Kids say the darnedest things.”
Flatter Pod: Reaction to another Preakness snub.
I think John Cherwa, sometimes a racing writer for the Los Angeles Times and more often an under-compensated cast member on my podcast, might have been one of those kids. Now all grown up and old like me, Johnny Applecheeks said the darnedest thing the other day.
“If horse racing is hellbent on destroying itself, they’re doing a great job,” he said.
We have heard him say this before. That the cause of the sport’s death will be suicide. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was not his darnedest thing.
When Cherwa, Fairmount Park announcer Keith Nelson and I recorded our weekly host chat Thursday morning for the Friday podcast, we still were fresh off getting Wednesday’s stony notice from trainer Cherie DeVaux.
Hear ye, hear ye. Golden Tempo would not try to parlay his Kentucky Derby 2026 triumph into a Triple Crown. Preakness, Shmeakness. Just wait for us at the Belmont Stakes.
“__________ gave us the race of a lifetime in the Kentucky Derby, and we believe the best decision for him moving forward is to give him a little more time following such a tremendous effort,” that monochromatic notice said. “His health, happiness and long-term future will always remain our top priority.”
Oh, sorry. I forgot to fill in Golden Tempo’s name. I guess I pulled out the standard form letter that is used nowadays for such occasions.
Back to Cherwa. And Nelson, who challenged the two of us with a sharp-shooting text within minutes of the annual snubbing of the Preakness.
“I expect the same thing both of you did with Mott,” he wrote.
That was his way of saying that DeVaux’s rewriting of history as the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner might have been a wonderful story. But now we should castigate her the way we did when we filleted Bill Mott and Godolphin last year for leaving Sovereignty out of the Preakness.
At first I said this was different. I did not read that DeVaux told David Grening of Daily Racing Form, “There was no reason physically why couldn’t have run in the Preakness. We had no excuse other than we didn’t feel like it.” That trope has not been reused since Mott unfurled it last year.
But then I thought about the overarching new history of the Triple Crown. How five of the last eight Kentucky Derby winners have not even taken a whiff of the hay in Maryland. OK, 4 of 8 if we consider that Mandaloun was not the Derby winner yet at the time of the 2021 Preakness. The die was cast with Country House, who never raced again after his 2019 Derby win, and with Rich Strike, who never was considered a Triple Crown threat even after his 80-1 Kentucky surprise in 2022.
They can push the Preakness back a week or two or even make it the first Saturday in June, which this year is five weeks after the Derby. That does not mean owners and trainers will go, especially if the race’s purse is worth the same on the inflation calculator as it was when Silver Charm won nearly three decades ago.
The Preakness has turned into the Pro Bowl and the NBA All-Star Game. No one wants to go, and if they do, they do not try hard. No matter what Roger Goodell and Adam Silver do to fix them, those games are doomed to be extinct just as the Preakness may suffer the inevitable fate of being a listed stakes in Grade 1 trappings.
But back to Cherwa. After his usual gloomy if accurate prediction about racing, he surprised us.
“I also have a solution, too,” he said. “In order to be considered to run in the Kentucky Derby, you have to agree that if you win, your horse will be examined by three veterinarians. … If one of those three veterinarians says the horse is not fit to run in the next race, the Preakness, then the horse doesn’t have to. But if all three of them say the horse is sound to do it, then the horse has to run in the Preakness.”
As Cherwa said this, I tried to think of a reason to hate the idea. The cynic in me was flailing, like someone trying to catch a butterfly with both hands. Cherwa was not finished.
“I also believe that you can’t make a trainer run a horse,” he said. “If in fact, despite that veterinary thing that says that he’s OK, if he does not run in the Preakness, he forfeits not the win but the purse (from the Derby). The whole purse is forfeited, and that money is used to promote horse racing and not go into the Churchill Downs coffers.”
I had to admit it sounded really good, especially since Churchill Downs Inc. is spending $85 million for the intellectual-property rights for the Preakness. No one really knows what form that will take. We might have learned more had CEO Bill Carstanjen’s microphone not failed for 40 seconds during an earnings call to shareholders last month. One thing is for sure. Carstanjen’s desire to make the Preakness the second-most important race in the country came through loud and clear.
For $85 million, Churchill will not be sitting in the back row at meetings that shape the future of the Preakness. Carstanjen and the shareholders he serves rightfully will demand ideas that turn into action that turns into restoring the Preakness to its proper pedestal.
Rescheduling the race brings with it the attendant hue and cry on either side of the debate. Throwing more money into the purse, though, is way overdue. Maybe Churchill even regurgitates the old bonus that used to come with racing for the whole Triple Crown. Money has a way of convincing people to show up, too.
And then there is the Cherwa plan. He is like most of us when it comes to griping about what we don’t like. Unlike the rest of us, he offered a solution.
Poke holes in it. Be critical of it. Say why it will or will not work. Or, by God, offer an alternative solution. Is that not what the comments beneath this story are for other than to tell me to go back into semi-retirement hibernation? And yes, I kind of like that idea.
If nothing else, Churchill Downs Inc. has the ball and bat and, with them, the opportunity to save the Triple Crown. It sure beats what DeVaux and Mott and their client owners have done these last two years, when they took the ball and bat and went home.
Senior writer Ron Flatter is the semi-retired managing editor who writes occasional columns for Horse Racing Nation.
