Every year after the first Saturday in May, the same conversation kicks up: should the Derby winner ship to Baltimore 2 weeks later and chase the Triple Crown, or pass on the Preakness and protect the horse for bigger summer targets? It used to be a no-brainer for fans. Win the Derby, run the Preakness, that's the deal. But the sport has changed, and so have the people who built their brand on yelling about it.
John Rich planted his flag on the traditional side, and he didn't really hedge it.
The line in the sand: skip the Preakness, lose your spot in the Derby.
As a man who doesn’t understand a single fucking thing about horse racing, if you aren’t willing to race the Preakness, you shouldn’t be allowed in the Kentucky Derby
It's a clean argument. If the Triple Crown is the thing that makes the sport matter to anybody outside the small percentage of people who follow horse racing year round, then the Derby winner ducking the Preakness guts the only 6 weeks of the calendar that casuals care about. Make the entry stakes higher, force everyone to run all 3, problem solved. That's the Rich position.
Dave Portnoy used to be in that camp too. He's flipping, and he's pinning the blame squarely on the people running Pimlico.
Portnoy explaining why he no longer blames the connections for skipping Baltimore.
I used to get mad about Derby winners skipping Preakness. That it was bad for the sport. But the people who own the Preakness don’t give a flying fuck about horse racing so I’ve changed my tune. Owners and connections should do what’s best for the horse
The Preakness has been a slow-motion mess for years. Pimlico is falling apart, the meet around it has been hollowed out, and the renovation timeline keeps moving. So when an owner with a Derby winner looks at running back in 2 weeks at a track the host doesn't even seem invested in, the math gets ugly fast. Portnoy's point isn't that tradition stopped mattering. It's that you can't keep asking horsemen to carry tradition for a venue that won't carry its own water.
Both guys are right, which is why this fight isn't going anywhere. Rich wants the sport to force the issue from the top down. Portnoy wants the people who own the middle leg to actually act like they want it to exist. Until someone in Maryland gives the connections a reason to show up, you'll get this same argument every May, and the Derby winner will keep deciding it case by case.