NBC Sports racing analyst Randy Moss, who will be part of the network’s Preakness Stakes broadcast on Saturday, spoke on the Triple Crown schedule and said that horse trainers are “about as loathed to run their horses back in three weeks as they are in two weeks,” according to Sam Cohn of the BALTIMORE SUN. Moss said, “I have trainers tell me they don’t want to run back in four weeks. They would rather have five or six weeks in between races.” Moss noted something like that would “be maybe too much change right now for the Triple Crown.” But he added the “concept that some people have offered” -- with the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May, the Preakness on the first Saturday in June and the Belmont Stakes either on the first or second Saturday in July -- “would work much better than the current scenario.” When asked if Churchill Downs Inc. recently buying the IP for the Preakness would help that shift in schedule, Moss said, “They don’t invest $85 million without the intent to make money. … The hope is that Churchill Downs Incorporated ... will be similarly aggressive in insisting that the spacing of the three races gets changed.” This year’s Preakness also marks the final year of NBC Sports’ broadcasting deal for the race. Moss: “NBC would love to keep the Preakness Stakes. We love the Preakness. But it’s a business decision that the Maryland Jockey Club -- perhaps in conjunction with Churchill Downs, but maybe not -- has to make on their own. Regardless of who winds up televising the Preakness Stakes, for the good of the sport, the spacing needs to be changed” (BALTIMORE SUN, 5/11).
A DIFFERENT FEELING: In Baltimore, Childs Walker wrote the 2026 Preakness will be “something else entirely” as Maryland’s signature race moves to Laurel Park amid a $400M rebuild of Pimlico Race Course and as 1/ST Racing “takes its final bow” operating the race. The crowd, which peaked at an announced 140,327 at Pimlico in 2017, will be “capped at about 4,800” for Laurel Park. There will also be no infield party. But of “more concern to the broader racing audience” will be the absence of Kentucky Derby winner Golden Tempo and his trainer, Cherie DeVaux. This marks the third time in five years the Derby winner will skip the Preakness “without an injury excuse,” and DeVaux’s decision has “brought new urgency to calls for a more spaced-out Triple Crown schedule.” Between the Preakness’ “lesser economic punch … its decline as a pure sporting spectacle and the wait to return to its reimagined Baltimore home,” this is a year of “painful transition for one of the state’s bedrock events.” Maryland Jockey Club President & GM Bill Knauf said that the Preakness brand is not “in peril.” Knauf is “dreaming up plans for 2027 and beyond with an event manager who helps stage” F1 races and “other premium spectacles.” Knauf hopes the full opening of a new Pimlico in 2028 (the grandstand will not be ready next year) will be a “big bang” for the Preakness’ next era (BALTIMORE BANNER, 5/11).
