As we proceed down the Triple Crown trail this spring, a main topic of conversation figures to be the new, controversial point system Churchill Downs has inaugurated to determine which 3-year-olds make the 20-horse cutoff for the May 4 Kentucky Derby, replacing the graded-stakes earnings standard that’s been used since 1986.
The point system is broken down into the “Kentucky Derby Prep Season” and the three-tiered “Kentucky Derby Championship Series” (as if these 36 stakes races at 17 different tracks exist solely to serve as Derby preps).
Points for the Prep Season — which runs from Sept. 29 to Feb. 18, and includes such major 2-year-old events as the Champagne and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and important 3-year-old stakes like the Holy Bull, Withers and Robert B. Lewis — are apportioned 10 for a win, 4 for a second-place finish, 2 for a third and 1 for a fourth.
In the first leg of the Championship Series (eight races from Feb. 23 to March 24), the point breakdown is greatly expanded to 50-20-10-5. The second leg (seven races from March 30 to April 13) doubles that to 100-40-20-10. The two races of the “wild card” leg, the Lexington and Derby Trial, are worth 20-8-4-2.
It is patently ridiculous that a horse finishing fourth (beaten, say, 15 lengths) in the March 30 UAE Derby — or, for that manner, in any of the second-leg races, including the Florida Derby, Louisiana Derby, Wood Memorial, Santa Anita Derby, Arkansas Derby and Blue Grass — earns the same points as a horse does for winning the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Holy Bull, Withers and R.B. Lewis.
The worst-case scenario (or best case, depending on your sense of humor) would be for a horse that would have made the Derby based on earnings to be denied a starting berth under the new points system, and then for that horse to come back and win the Preakness by 10 lengths and the Belmont Stakes by 20.
Another new wrinkle Churchill Downs added this year is that most of the media covering the Derby won’t be able to watch the race live. Instead, they’ll watch it on TV in an OTB parlor in the bowels of Churchill that will serve as the media center during Derby Week.
That’s because the old press box that overlooked the track, the Joe Hirsch Media Center, has been converted into something called “The Mansion” for high-rollers. Based on an antebellum southern plantation, the Mansion makes its debut the same year that “Django Unchained” is up for an Academy Award.
* Game on Dude ($2.10), with Mike Smith aboard, captured yesterday’s 200G San Antonio Stakes at Santa Anita by 6 1/2 lengths. The winner, trained by Bob Baffert, went the mile and an eighth in 1:47.53.
Clubhouse Ride was second, Make Music for Me third and Basmati last in the four-horse field.
With AP