2020 Triple Crown | Horse Racing Free Tips

The Friday Show Presented By Woodbine: Highs, Lows And Takeaways From 2020 Triple Crown

The Paulick Report editorial team – publisher Ray Paulick, editor-in-chief Natalie Voss, news editor Chelsea Hackbarth and bloodstock editor Joe Nevills – takes a look back at this strangest of Triple Crowns in this week's edition of the Friday Show.

From the minute Churchill Downs officials announced in mid-March that the Kentucky Derby would be postponed until Sept. 5 because of the coronavirus pandemic, we knew this year was going to be different. I don't think any of us knew how different.

Kicking off with a distance-shortened Belmont Stakes June 20 and ending with a Preakness on Oct. 3 that may be remembered as one of the most exciting renewals in recent history, the Triple Crown had its share of highs … and lows. We may have learned a few things – some takeaways – from this year as well.

Watch this week's Friday Show below and let us know what your favorite memories were from the 2020 Triple Crown.

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Wagering, TV Ratings Drop Sharply During ‘Pandemic’ Triple Crown

Like the Triple Crown-opening Belmont Stakes in June and the delayed Kentucky Derby in September, Saturday's 145th running of the Preakness Stakes from Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Md., saw significant declines both in wagering and television viewership.

Normally run on the third Saturday in May, two weeks after the Kentucky Derby, this year's Preakness – like all three Triple Crown races – was run without spectators on site, meaning on-track wagering was minimal. The Preakness encountered not only increased competition from the sports world – it was up against six televised NCAA football games including Texas A&M at Alabama, Oklahoma State at Kansas and Ole Miss at Kentucky – but both Belmont Park and Keeneland offered a full slate of late afternoon graded stakes races serving as major preps for the Nov. 6-7 Breeders' Cup world championships.

For the day, according to Equibase, wagering on Pimlico's 12-race card was $51,242,631, a decline of 48.7% from the record $99,852,653 bet on the 14-race Preakness Day card in 2019. The Preakness race itself handled $31.7 million, down 49.5% from 2019 when $62.8 million was wagered on the classic race for 3-year-olds.

The wagering declines were similar to those experienced by Churchill Downs on Kentucky Derby day Sept. 5 and on the Derby itself, when handle dropped by 49.8% and 52.0%, respectively. Derby Day wagering fell from a record $250.9 million to $126.0 million and the Derby itself handled $79.4 million compared to $165.5 million in 2019.

The Belmont Stakes, which on June 20 kicked off a Triple Crown reshuffled because of the coronavirus pandemic, saw smaller wagering declines compared to 2019. The $67.8 million bet on this year's Belmont Stakes card was down 33.7% from $102.1 million in 2019 and the Belmont Stakes saw a 35.9% decline from $53.2 million to $34.1 million.

Combined, wagering on the three Triple Crown cards fell by more than $200 million, from $453 million in 2019 to $245 million this year, a decline of 45.9%.

Just as many other major league sports have struggled to maintain television viewership, so too have horse racing's marquee events. The combined viewing audience for the NBC Sports telecasts of the three Triple Crown races fell by 47.3% from 26.6 million in 2019 to 14 million in 2020. The Belmont's 2.0 rating was the lowest in 24 years and the 4.8 rating for the Derby – traditionally the highest-rated racing telecast of the year – sank to a 32-year low. The Preakness rating of 1.4 represented a viewing audience of 2.4 million compared to 5.4 million in 2019.

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View From The Eighth Pole: The Impossible Dream

Well, we got through it.

The 2020 Triple Crown was different, that's for sure.

A Belmont Stakes that began the series, not at its traditional mile and a half but at a truncated nine furlongs around one turn.

A Kentucky Derby run in eerie silence on the first Saturday in September in a city on edge for months because of growing racial tensions.

A lost in the shuffle Preakness Stakes that brought the series to an end in early October on a day when tracks in New York and Kentucky were showcasing horses gearing up for the autumn Breeders' Cup world championships.

It was unprecedented. It was beautiful. It was 2020 personified.

The stars of this Triple Crown in the year of the coronavirus pandemic were, as always, those magnificent Thoroughbreds.

The New York-bred Tiz the Law demonstrating his dominance at Belmont Park for octogenarian Barclay Tagg and the everyman Sackatoga Stable partners, proving that age is just a number when it comes to training a racehorse.

The Derby showed us, once again, why they run the race.

While Tiz the Law looked unbeatable on paper, having gone on after the Belmont to win the Travers Stakes over the same mile and a quarter distance, he hadn't yet taken on the aces from the Bob Baffert Travel Team. Sure, Nadal was retired, Charlatan had been sidelined with an injury and Eight Rings, Cezanne and Uncle Chuck just weren't up to to the task at this stage of their careers, but the white-haired wonder still had the once-beaten Into Mischief colt Authentic and the insurgent Thousand Words in his arsenal. Well, scratch the latter…literally…just minutes before the Derby after acting up in the saddling paddock.

Authentic proved just that, denying Tiz the Law in the Run for the Roses and looking like a cinch to repeat in the Preakness a month later – especially after the Belmont winner's connections decided to sit this one out. A cinch, at least until forgotten rider Robby Albarado seized the moment to resurrect his career, boldly sending the gallant filly Swiss Skydiver to take on Authentic for a throwdown in the final three-eighths of a mile the likes of which we haven't seen at Old Hilltop since Sunday Silence and Easy Goer were hip to hip in that glorious Preakness of 1989. Or maybe since Albarado, aboard Curlin, engaged and defeated Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense in another memorable running of the Preakness in 2007.

Trainer Kenny McPeek calls this Daredevil filly – one he bought for just $35,000 on day nine of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale – a throwback. Sure nuff, she is. Her past performances read like the announcements echoing through a train station: Tampa, New Orleans, Miami, Hot Springs, Arcadia, Lexington, Saratoga Springs, Louisville, Baltimore.

All aboard.

This was David beating Goliath, Main Street outperforming Wall Street. It wasn't just a filly against colts, it was a victory for the little guys against the conglomerates. Likewise, Belmont winner Tiz the Law came from an ownership group that won all of four races last year from a five-horse stable.

But this game isn't about numbers, at least not for everyone. It's about dreams. Seemingly impossible dreams. And when they come true, as Don Quixote said, the world will be better for this.

That's my view from the eighth pole.

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Beyer: It’s Time To Reconsider Triple Crown Schedule, Stick With Late Season Series

This year's Triple Crown schedule has been unlike any other thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, and many racing fans are still shaking their heads at the oddity of a Kentucky Derby taking place on the first Saturday in September. Speaking on Off to the Races on The Racing Biz Radio Network earlier this month however, longtime racing analyst, horseplayer, and columnist Andrew Beyer said he thinks some of this year's changes should be permanent.

“I think the 3-year-old racing this year has been different but it's been quite satisfactory,” said Beyer. “I think starting the series later in the year gave horses a chance to mature and really be ready to run top notch races, as Tiz the Law did in the Belmont, whereas modern day racing horses don't train and race hard enough going into the Kentucky Derby to really be able to deliver maximum performance.”

Beyer, who engineered the Beyer Speed Figure, thinks the spring scheduling of the Derby has resulted in poorer performances there in recent years.

“We just haven't seen many great Derbies from the speed figure standpoint for a long time,” he said.

There have been calls to alter the schedule or distance of the Triple Crown races in recent memory, but those mostly fell silent after American Pharoah ended the three-decade Triple Crown drought in 2015, followed closely by Justify in 2018.

Beyer thinks the three races should be spread farther apart, pointing out the two-week turnaround between Derby and Preakness tends to negatively impact the Preakness field. He also questions the distances of the races, pointing out that 1 1/2-mile Belmont “is really an anachronism in modern racing,” and wondering if all three should have their distances reconsidered.

“I think the racing industry should, after this season, kind of take a look at the structure of the Triple Crown and see how we might improve it,” said Beyer.

“There's no rule that we have to do everything the way we did 50 years ago.”

Listen to the complete episode of Off to the Races below:

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