Horse Racing / Bill Christine : Triple Crown Bonus Plan Sacrifices Fairness to Bolster Belmont Field

In the 1960 World Series, the Pirates were outscored by the Yankees, 55-27, but Pittsburgh still won the title by taking four of the seven games.

The Pirates won by 6-4, 3-2, 5-2, and 10-9, while New York was winning, 16-3, 10-0 and 12-0.

However, no one suggested that the Yankees be declared the champions. But under the rules of racing’s Triple Crown, a horse can win two out of the three races in the series and still not earn a $1-million bonus.

That happened in 1987, the first year the $1-million bonus was offered.

Alysheba won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, but then missed finishing third by a neck in the Belmont and blew the bonus.

Bet Twice, second in both the Derby and the Preakness, won the Belmont and beat out Alysheba on points, 11-10.

The same thing could happen this year. Sunday Silence, after winning the Derby and Preakness, can clinch the bonus by finishing at least third if Easy Goer wins the Belmont. Of course, a win by Sunday Silence at Belmont Park on June 10 gives him a Triple Crown sweep and a $5-million payoff.

The problem with the Triple Crown point system of 5-3-1 for first-, second- and third-place finishes in the three races is that a winner doesn’t receive much more credit than the horse that runs second.

The Triple Crown tracks--Churchill Downs, Pimlico and Belmont--considered altering the point system after the Bet Twice-Alysheba anomaly, but decided to keep it in order to encourage entries for the Belmont.

Meantime, the system is unfair. Any horse that dominates a series deserves the big bucks. Would tennis give the Wimbledon championship to a player who won the most games, but not the most sets?

Since Gato Del Sol won the Kentucky Derby in 1982, six of the last eight winners have been 3-year-olds who trained in California.

The last four Derby winners--Ferdinand, Alysheba, Winning Colors and Sunday Silence--were California-based and in 1983, between the last four and Gato Del Sol, came Sunny’s Halo, who trained at Hollywood Park and swam in the track’s swimming pool before he used a two-race Arkansas schedule to get him ready for Louisville.

The five California horses ran in the Santa Anita Derby. That was the final Kentucky Derby prep for Ferdinand, Winning Colors and Sunday Silence, with Gato Del Sol and Alysheba running in the Blue Grass when that Keeneland stake was run nine days before the Derby.

None of the California horses were favored in the Kentucky Derby. “I think that the California horses come to Churchill Downs underrated and the Eastern horses are overrated,” trainer Wayne Lukas said last week. Lukas won the Derby last year with the filly, Winning Colors.

The Santa Anita Derby, which is run a month before the Kentucky Derby, is perfectly situated for the horse who will need no additional racing experience before running at Churchill Downs. It is almost certain to be run in good weather and gives a trainer enough time to get his horse acclimated in Louisville.

On the other hand, the Wood Memorial, run at Aqueduct two weeks before the Derby, no longer is a prime prep race. The last horse to come out of the Wood and win the Derby was Pleasant Colony in 1981.

Still, there probably will be no rush of Eastern horses going to the Santa Anita Derby instead of running in the Wood.

“I’m not going to run in the Florida preps and then ship to Santa Anita, because we race in the East,” said Shug McGaughey, Easy Goer’s trainer.

“We had a good program going into the Derby this year. If you have a hard race in the Wood, then it comes a little bit too close to the Derby, but Easy Goer didn’t have a hard race this year, and we thought it was just perfect for him.”

Bill Shoemaker will leave next week for the first part of his retirement tour abroad. Shoemaker will start in Zurich, Switzerland, and continue through England, Ireland, the Netherlands, West Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Italy and Greece.

Shoemaker, 57, who hopes to train horses when he retires at the end of the year, will return to the United States in late July and later in the year he will visit Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia.

Last week at Pimlico, Shoemaker sat on the porch of the jockeys’ room with his friend, veterinarian Alex Harthill.

The track announcer started talking and Shoemaker said: “Geez, Doc, that (South African) accent sounds exactly like Trevor Denman. How could there be two guys in racing that sound like that?”

“Shoe,” Harthill said, “that is Trevor Denman.”

Denman, the regular caller at Santa Anita and Del Mar who will be calling the races in Maryland until July 4, says that it’s been an adjustment for him at Pimlico.

“I’m still trying to get used to the horses and the jockeys’ styles,” he said. “You get spoiled in California, with all the good horses. By and large, it’s a different class of horse running in Maryland.”

There have been mixed reviews for the 36-year-old Denman at Pimlico.

“He sounds too much like a tobacco auctioneer,” one fan said.

But Clem Florio, a handicapper for the Washington Post, disagrees.

“This guy is fabulous,” Florio said. “He lets you know what’s really going on in a horse race.”

When Shoemaker won a race at Pimlico last week, Frank De Francis, the principal owner of the track, held a $5 win ticket that was worth about $60 on the horse.

“At first, I thought I’d keep the ticket as a souvenir, because it probably would be the last time Shoe would ride at Pimlico,” De Francis said. “But then I thought about the $60. I cashed the ticket. I’ll get a souvenir of Shoe from another track.”

Horse Racing Notes

Awe Inspiring will be challenged by Faultless Ensign, Contested Colors, Manastash Ridge and Irish Actor in the $500,000 Jersey Derby at Garden State Park on Monday. . . . The same day, On the Line, Seeking the Gold and Simply Majestic will run in the $500,000 Metropolitan Mile at Belmont Park. . . . On Saturday, Open Mind, the best 3-year-old filly in the country, runs in the $150,000 Acorn at Belmont. . . . Some of the 3-year-olds who weren’t good enough for the Triple Crown--Endow, Music Merci, Mercedes Won and Notation--will run at Sportsman’s Park Saturday in the $500,000 Illinois Derby.

Sunday Silence’s hoof problems appear to be behind him, even though he loosened his left front shoe while winning the Preakness. . . . Two horses from France--Le Voyageur and Sovereign Water--are due to arrive in New York next week to run in the Belmont Stakes on June 10. They will be required to spend 26 hours in the quarantine paddock at Aqueduct before they can be moved to Belmont Park. Le Voyageur is a son of Seattle Slew and owned by Calumet Farms. . . . Hawkster, fifth in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, is going to run in the Belmont.

Tom Aronson is leaving the American Horse Council to work for Freestate Raceway, the harness track in Laurel, Md. Starting Wednesday night, Freestate began experimenting with a system in which post positions won’t be known for horses until after betting is shut off about a minute before the race. Post positions are more of a factor in harness races. The track says it is trying to create more betting interest, and it probably will. In harness racing, stables sometimes don’t bet as much on their own horses when they draw outside posts, but under this setup, no one will know ahead of time where the horses will start. Big bettors are already complaining about the experiment, because it’s a handicapping factor that’s being taken away from them.