Tom Chuckas on Preakness/TC Spacing

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by SundayStar

i agree with you on how to make preakness day a bigger day. and wouldn't it be easier to attract top horses(i.e. Wise Dan) if the preakness was 4 weeks after the derby? zero top horses that run on the undercard of the derby are going to run two weeks later. make it 4 weeks and you're gonna get some...especially if the purses are nice.

what i'm saying is instead of trying to appeal to the other horses who ran derby day, they need to work backwards from what the belmont has scheduled for 3 weeks later. their day is a good fit for what will happen in ny.
moving it to a month later won't necessarily help them, and there's a lot of resistance to it. and i don't know that all derby horses would show back up regardless of when the preakness is.

also, not all top horses are there on derby day, and a lot of top stables operate based on nyra and its schedule-so fill a niche with those people. they can draw top horses if they do it right. but just kvetching about the schedule isn't a way to make the preakness and undercard better.

look at their offerings in the other threads those two days. they need to shake things up. not every horse going to belmont on belmont stakes day runs in ky five weeks before. they need to re-do their races. they need preps for 3 weeks later, good purses, etc.