By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews — Maryland on the Map
The skip announcement came four days after the Kentucky Derby. It was gracious, well-worded, and completely predictable. Golden Tempo would bypass the Preakness Stakes. His health and long-term future come first. The team is grateful for the support.
Maryland has heard this before. Three times in five years, in fact.
The first piece in this series documented what those skips cost Maryland — $450 million in public investment in facilities that house a race whose most important participants keep deciding not to show up. Churchill Downs Incorporated, the Kentucky company that now owns the Preakness brand outright, also owns the Derby. The incentive structure that makes skipping rational is controlled by a private company with no particular obligation to fix it. Maryland holds the building. Someone else holds everything that makes the building worth anything.
That piece asked the question. This one attempts an answer.
The Preakness does not need to wait for a Triple Crown contender to be relevant. It does not need the Derby winner in the gate to justify its existence or Maryland’s investment. What it needs is a structural role in American horse racing that makes it worth entering on its own terms — regardless of what happened three weeks earlier at Churchill Downs.
The current Triple Crown format does not provide that. A new one could.
What’s Broken and Why
The Triple Crown, as currently constructed, is a sequence, not a system. Win the Derby, run the Preakness two weeks later, run the Belmont three weeks after that. The reward for completing all three is prestige and a place in history. The risk is injury, burnout, and the destruction of a stud valuation that was already established the moment a horse crossed the wire at Churchill Downs.
For a Derby winner whose connections are managing a long-term breeding career worth tens of millions of dollars, the math increasingly does not work. Last year’s Derby winner skipped the Preakness, won the Belmont, swept two major summer races, and was named Horse of the Year. Nothing was lost. The template is set.
The Preakness, in its current format, finds itself in an impossible position. Its prestige depends entirely on the Derby winner’s presence. When that horse runs, it is the most watched race in America after the Derby itself. When that horse doesn’t run, it is a very good race that most of the country ignores.
Maryland cannot fix that by building a nicer racetrack. Maryland cannot fix that by running better promotions or negotiating harder with CDI. The problem is structural, and the only fix is structural.
A Proposal: The Belmont Championship
The reform is straightforward. Make the Belmont Stakes a true national championship race — not the third leg of a sequence, but a destination that horses qualify for by winning any one of three major races leading into it.
The four-race structure looks like this:
The Santa Anita Derby becomes the West Coast qualifier. It already exists as one of the premier Derby prep races. Elevating it to full championship qualifier status gives the West Coast a genuine stake in the Triple Crown conversation for the first time and opens a pathway for horses that never set foot on an Eastern track until June.
The Kentucky Derby remains what it is — the most prestigious two minutes in American sports, the race that defines the sport’s calendar. Its winner punches an automatic ticket to the Belmont championship.
The Preakness Stakes becomes the second qualifier. Its winner earns an automatic Belmont entry regardless of whether the Derby winner is in the field. A horse can skip the Derby entirely, target the Preakness, win, and arrive at Belmont Park in June as a championship qualifier. The Preakness stops being a tax on Derby winners and becomes its own gateway.
A points pathway provides entry for horses that ran well across multiple qualifying races without winning any single one — rewarding consistency and giving connections a reason to keep running rather than targeting one race and protecting their horse for the breeding shed.
The Belmont Stakes, under this format, becomes appointment television every single year. Not just when a Triple Crown is on the line — every year. Because every year, you could have three different winners meeting head-to-head in a genuine championship race. Santa Anita’s winner against the Derby winner against the Preakness winner. That is a race worth watching. That is a race worth building a $400 million facility to host the qualifying leg of.
What This Does for the Preakness
The skip problem does not disappear under this format. A Derby winner whose connections want to protect their horse can still bypass the Preakness. But the calculus changes in two important ways.
First, skipping the Preakness no longer costs a Derby winner nothing. Under the current format, a healthy Derby winner who skips the Preakness and points to the Belmont suffers no competitive consequence — the Belmont will be there regardless. Under the championship format, skipping the Preakness means arriving at the Belmont having watched another horse already claim a qualifier spot. The Derby winner is still in — they won the Derby — but the field they’re walking into is stronger and more legitimate because the Preakness produced its own champion.
Second, and more importantly, the Preakness gains independent value it has never had. Right now, a horse that targets the Preakness without having run the Derby is competing for a race that leads nowhere in particular. Under the championship format, winning the Preakness is a Belmont ticket. Trainers who want to protect their horses from the Derby’s 20-horse chaos, or who are coming off a West Coast campaign, now have a reason to point toward Pimlico. The race fills itself on merit rather than depending on a single horse’s connections making a generous decision.
Maryland’s case for its $450 million investment has always rested on the Preakness being a marquee national event. Under the current format, that argument weakens every time a Derby winner skips. Under a championship format, the Preakness is structurally guaranteed relevance. It is one of three roads to the Belmont. You do not need the Derby winner in the gate to make it matter.
The Politics of Getting There
None of this happens easily. The Triple Crown schedule is governed by a combination of tradition, television contracts, track interests, and the competing financial incentives of Churchill Downs, the New York Racing Association, and now CDI’s ownership of the Preakness brand itself. Moving any race affects every other race. Elevating Santa Anita means negotiating with a West Coast track that has its own ownership structure and its own interests.
But the alternative is continuing to watch the sport’s signature event series slowly hollow out from the inside. The Preakness cannot survive indefinitely as a race that matters only when the Derby winner shows up. Churchill Downs cannot extract long-term value from a brand it paid $85 million for if that brand keeps producing empty fields and low-stakes matchups. The New York Racing Association cannot run a Belmont Stakes that alternates between historic coronation and extended afterthought and call that a sustainable product.
The interests are actually aligned, even if the politics are not. Everyone in this ecosystem benefits from a Belmont championship that is worth watching every year. The question is whether the stakeholders who control the pieces — CDI above all — have the will to build it.
Maryland’s leverage in that conversation is limited but real. The state owns Pimlico. The rebuilt facility opening in 2027 represents a moment of genuine renegotiation — new venue, new terms, new opportunity to ask what the Preakness is supposed to be and what Maryland gets for housing it. Annapolis should be asking those questions now, before the ribbon is cut and the leverage disappears.
The Preakness does not need the Derby winner. It needs a reason to matter on a Saturday when the Derby winner stays home. A championship format provides that reason. Maryland’s investment deserves nothing less.
Maryland on the Map is an ongoing MDBayNews series on the state’s sporting economy and public investment in major events.
Sources: Cherie DeVaux Racing official statement; Churchill Downs Incorporated; Maryland Stadium Authority; Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority; prior MDBayNews Maryland on the Map series reporting.
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