It’s Not a Third Leg to Stand On

It appears as though ABC, which will televise Saturday’s Belmont for the first time in five years, may take a kick in the shin from the third leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown -- a race now more noteworthy for who is not running than for who is.

Missing will be Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, who sustained career-ending leg injuries in the Preakness, and Preakness winner Bernardini, whose handlers are skipping this race in favor of a schedule pointing toward the Breeders’ Cup Classic in November.

Also missing will be Santa Anita Derby winner Brother Derek.

That leaves relatively unknown horses such as Bluegrass Cat, Steppenwolfer and Sunriver as the main attractions to what ABC and the New York Racing Assn. had anticipated might be a blockbuster national audience.

So, besides focusing on the race itself, ABC’s two-hour telecast will feature stories surrounding the Belmont -- Barbaro and his recovery foremost among them.

“And with Barbaro not running, another horse is going to emerge, and that will be a big story,” said Len DeLuca, senior vice president of programming and acquisitions for ABC Sports and ESPN.

DeLuca acknowledged that having a horse vying for a Triple Crown would make for a much better rating, but added, “This is no way diminishes our excitement ... or our commitment.”

This will be the first time one of the Triple Crown races has been on a different network than the first two. NBC televised this year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness.

In the fall of 2004, ABC Sports and ESPN, which operate as one and the same, stole the Belmont from NBC by reaching a five-year agreement with the NYRA. Although terms of the contract were not disclosed, it appeared to be a good deal at the time.

In June 2004, with Smarty Jones going after the Triple Crown, the Belmont got an 11.3 national rating on NBC, marking the first time since the 1990 Kentucky Derby that a Triple Crown race had earned a double-digit national rating.

In 2003, when Funny Cide was going for the Triple Crown, the national rating for the Belmont was a 9.2. The year before that, when War Emblem was going for it, the rating was 7.6.

Those strong Belmont ratings emboldened the NYRA when it came time to negotiate a new deal. Under the terms of its previous five-year, $51.5-million contract with NBC for all three Triple Crown races, half of the money went to the Kentucky Derby with the Preakness and Belmont splitting the rest.

Seeking a more lucrative deal for its race, Bill Nader, NYRA’s senior vice president, said his organization sought out ABC-ESPN. Mark Shapiro, an ESPN senior vice president at the time, and DeLuca acted quickly.

The new contract calls for ABC to televise the race, with ESPN offering supplemental coverage. A key to forging the agreement, DeLuca said, was the multimedia platforms ABC-ESPN could offer. Those include the Internet and cellphones. ABC-ESPN also promised more coverage than the Belmont had ever received.

On Saturday, the race coverage on ABC will run from 2-4 p.m. PDT, a half-hour more than NBC allotted in recent years.

Supplemental coverage on ESPN2 begins today at 10 a.m. with a half-hour preview on “Citgo Wire to Wire.” Friday at 2 p.m. on ESPN2 will be live coverage of a Grade III turf race at Belmont.

On Saturday, ESPN will have continuous pre-race coverage from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. -- a three-hour preview followed by live coverage of three races leading up to the main event.

There will also be additional post-race coverage on ESPN after ABC goes off the air from Belmont.

NBC announced last May that it had reached agreements to keep the Kentucky Derby and Preakness through 2010, but at the time NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol was still at a loss to explain how, without so much as a conversation, the network lost the Triple Crown’s third jewel.

“It remains one of the most baffling mysteries I think I’ve run across in my career, considering how the event has grown, particularly through the promotion and marketing across all the platforms of NBC,” he said.

The NYRA never contacted NBC before announcing its new deal, leaving Ebersol and other network executives baffled.

But NBC’s loss might have saved the network in the short term. Some industry executives have speculated that a Belmont field without a Derby or Preakness winner will be a money-loser for ABC.

For this year, keeping the ratings solid seems a longshot bet.