THOROUGHBRED RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : More TV Coverage Behind Plan to Move Kentucky Derby Draw

The first Saturday in May is safe. So is the 1 1/4-mile distance, although trainer Wayne Lukas has advocated shortening the race. But what is likely to change for next year’s Kentucky Derby is the day that Churchill Downs holds the draw for post positions.

If the suggested plan goes through, Derby trainers who draw the dreaded auxiliary gate will have extra time to wring their hands.

Instead of drawing for post positions on Thursday morning, two days before the race, Churchill Downs is expected to move the ceremony to the Wednesday night before the race, at 6 p.m. Eastern time.

The reasons are television, television and television, and the change is correct, correct and correct. The loudest caterwauling will come from the East Coast newspaper reporters, the ones with the most pressing deadlines. But the Derby draw is accomplished in 30 minutes, tops.

Churchill Downs has the chance to get the draw covered by ESPN, in near-prime time.

“It would be a great spot on their schedule, just before their ‘SportsCenter’ show,” said Karl Schmitt, Churchill’s vice president for corporate communications.

Racing has seldom known what to do with television, and vice versa, and executives at the Triple Crown tracks--Churchill, Pimlico and Belmont Park--are particularly distressed about the TV ratings their races got this year. The Derby ratings dropped 20%, to the lowest they have ever been, and at Pimlico, where the Preakness is run, the ratings were down 27%.

By contrast, the on-track attendance for the Preakness was 87,707, second highest in the history of the race.

“I think that turnout had a lot to do with what we were able to do with local television for the first time,” said Joe De Francis, Pimlico’s president. “We got a local station to carry the post-position draw live during its highly rated noon news segment, and then the station carried on with pre-Preakness coverage right on up until race time. It was hard to be in Baltimore and not be reminded that we were running the Preakness.”

To accommodate the local station, Pimlico held the draw on a Thursday, as usual, but delayed the ceremony until midday. That made it sticky for the Daily Racing Form, with deadlines for its Saturday editions, but that comes under the heading of not being able to please all the people all the time.

The Belmont Stakes, the last leg of the Triple Crown, has problems all around. Its television ratings reached a nadir, and the on-track attendance, just over 37,000, was the lowest for the race in at least 35 years.

The Kentucky Derby, easily the healthiest of the Triple Crown races, has not stood still despite its huge historical advantage. Since 1985, Churchill Downs has spent more than $13 million in capital improvements, building a new paddock and opening a first-rate Derby museum. And four years ago, Churchill converted a Louisville harness track into the Sports Spectrum, a $15-million intertrack betting facility.

The proposed twilight Derby draw would be held at the spacious Spectrum, the natural evolution of an event that has been forever outgrowing its popularity. As recently as the late 1970s, the draw was still being staged in the cramped racing secretary’s office, where entries for any other race would be taken. In 1977, the year of Seattle Slew’s Triple Crown sweep, there were so many people jammed into that office that news photographers were standing on counters to take pictures.

By the early 1980s, Churchill moved the draw outdoors, to the paddock, and a few years later the museum became available. But the more room the track gave the event, the more people came, and this year even the museum’s large main hall was stretching its seams.

Shortly before the fire inspector arrived, they opened a side door, and dozens of horsemen and reporters spilled into a garden in the back of the building.

Churchill has belatedly bumped the Derby purse to $1 million, starting next year--it now gives the second-place finisher considerably more than the $25,000 that Sham earned for his game run against Secretariat in 1973--and the draw is on its way to getting the attention it deserves.

“We’ll know for sure in a couple of weeks,” Schmitt said. “The only down side I can see is the deadlines for the Eastern newspapers, and that’s something we’re not taking lightly.”

Since its inception in 1984, the Breeders’ Cup has taken entries 72 hours before the races. Veteran Derby trainers see no problem with having the Derby draw a day earlier.

Lukas, who has won the Derby twice, including this year with Thunder Gulch, has told Churchill Downs that he’s in favor of the move. At Hollywood Park on Thursday, Charlie Whittingham, another two-time Derby winner, said the Wednesday draw wouldn’t make any difference.

“I’m in favor,” trainer Richard Mandella chimed in. “If for no other reason, maybe that’ll change my luck back there.”

Mandella has finished 15th, fifth and eighth with three Derby starters.

Horse Racing Notes

After Martin Pedroza rode the winners of four races Wednesday, it was Alex Solis’ turn on Thursday. None of Solis’ four winners was a favorite, including Score Quick, who beat Argolid by a head in the feature. Solis’ spree leaves him second in the meet standings with 49 victories, 20 fewer than Corey Nakatani. . . . With Kent Desormeaux starting a five-day suspension Saturday, Gary Stevens takes over on Soul Of The Matter in Sunday’s $125,000 Bel Air Handicap, and Chris McCarron gets the assignment Saturday aboard Cyrano Storme in the $150,000 Hollywood Budweiser Breeders’ Cup Stakes. . . . Only four others--the top-weighted Pembroke, at 120 pounds, plus Lit De Justice, Lucky Forever and Three Peat--are running in Saturday’s race.

Favored One, who broke down in last Sunday’s Hollywood Oaks, is scheduled to undergo surgery on her right foreleg today. A steel plate will be inserted. Her racing career over, Favored One could be bred next year, with In Excess the target stallion. Before the Oaks, Favored One had four firsts, two seconds and two thirds in 10 races and had earned more than $200,000. . . . The temperature was 106 degrees in Omaha on Thursday, causing cancellation of the races at AKsarben.