Timing

How the worm has turned! A recent article in The Boston Globe by Mark Blaudschun calls the Matz way of training a horse for the Triple Crown (slowly) the new normal. It wasn't so long ago that the five weeks between Barbaro's Florida Derby win and the Kentucky Derby was as vast as the Sahara Desert--it was viewed as that long a lay off.

"The recent trend is less is better," Blaudschun writes. "Michael Matz did that with 3-year old Barbaro in 2006, running him only three times (in January, February and April), when he used the Florida Derby as his last Derby prep. . ."

The majority of this year's contenders are lightly raced thus far this year, including Eskendereya, Conveyance, Dublin and Back Talk. The bigger questions seems to be whether or not trainers are scared of injury or scared of using up their horses if indeed they think they are talented enough to make a Triple Crown run.

My guess is that it is a little of each. Whether it is breeding, training practices, racing surfaces, medication or a combination of any or all of these factors, long gone are the days of Sea Biscuit or War Admiral when horses would run about every two or three weeks.

Could that have contributed to the popularity of the sport? Probably. Like the baseball season, horse racing had some momentum once it got going and there wasn't this interminable time between races. Just ask any Fan of Lentenor, how long it seems between his races!!

Speaking of which. Don't count him out just yet. I still think he just might run in the Florida Derby depending on the level of the competition. Only time will tell if all of this tinkering with timetables will pay off.