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00:00When hot topics come around that need to be talked about and have to find their place,
00:04this isn't something that just broke just a few minutes ago, but it came out yesterday.
00:08And let's start here, Joe.
00:09And it deals with horse racing.
00:10For the casual sports fan who just likes big events, that's a lot of people out there.
00:15You know what?
00:15I don't really follow the NBA all that much during the regular season, but boy, I like
00:18the playoffs.
00:18I think it's pretty cool.
00:19The Stanley Cup, you know what?
00:21Going through those playoffs, I like to root on my team.
00:23But you know what?
00:24Once we get deeper into the rounds and watch the Stanley Cup finals, you can enjoy that.
00:28Not a huge football fan.
00:29That's kind of crazy to me, but maybe you dip in for the playoffs and the Super Bowl
00:33and it's a big event.
00:33Same thing with college sports, college basketball, and college football.
00:36But for horse racing, once a year, we line up.
00:39And it's similar to golf.
00:39Like, hey, the Masters is on there.
00:41It's pretty cool.
00:41Let's watch it and tune in.
00:42But the Masters, once it's done, hard maybe to say, like, okay, let me sell you the PGA
00:46Championship and the British Open.
00:48Nah, I'm out.
00:48I just like the Masters.
00:49I like the golf course.
00:50It's always there.
00:51Horse racing, we understand this.
00:52Triple crowns are hard to win.
00:54That is the Kentucky Derby.
00:55That's the Preakness, followed by the Belmont.
00:57The one thing that we usually have the luxury of Joe and Erie is we all get excited because
01:01the bigness of the Kentucky Derby, the fashion, the horses we hear about for a couple weeks,
01:05we watch it play out in front of us.
01:07And there is a champion of the Kentucky Derby, which was Sovereignty.
01:10So immediately we go, all right, Preakness is on in a couple weeks.
01:13Can we have a triple crown contender that can at least make it to the Belmont?
01:18And yesterday, news came down that Sovereignty will skip the Preakness and now target the Belmont.
01:23So my question to you is this, as we start here, if Sovereignty's goal is, hey, I want
01:29to win the Kentucky Derby, which is great.
01:31And for the owners, the trainers, you get it.
01:33And I just want to go off into the sunset and make money with studies.
01:37That's great.
01:38You shouldn't be in my term.
01:40You should not be able to skip the Preakness and then parachute back into the Belmont and
01:44say, well, I want two of the legs at that point, make even more stud fees.
01:48If you are in it all the way through, like you can't even joke for me.
01:51And I don't even know if this is a rule or not.
01:54Can you say, I'm not going to run in the Kentucky Derby, but I'm going to run in the Preakness?
01:57Can you actually do that?
02:00Yeah.
02:00And yes, absolutely.
02:02You know, you have to qualify for certain race.
02:06And listen, the problem, Donnie, is that, you know, go back a couple of decades with the
02:13Alidars and the Secretariats and the way horse racing used to be is that these horses, when
02:19they got to the Kentucky Derby and already raced six times in that year as a three-year-old,
02:27it wasn't their second or third or just fourth race.
02:31These horses these days are not bred and they are not raced to be able to go through a race
02:40every two weeks, which is basically what you have to do.
02:43That's not what these horses have been bred to do anymore.
02:47It's basically either one and done or I'll try two of the three legs and we'll see how
02:54that goes.
02:55And listen, it could be a million reasons why money, of course, being, I'm sure, at
03:00the top of the reason list, but there could be a million reasons why they don't want to
03:04go to the Preakness.
03:06It could be maybe it's too much on the horse.
03:08Again, a horse that's run what?
03:10Four times, five times in his life all of a sudden now is going to run three races in
03:15five weeks.
03:16I mean, you're asking them, you're asking a horse to do something and it's much more
03:21risky these days to have a horse do that gauntlet there and expect them to be OK on
03:27the on the outside.
03:29Plus, the money's earning bank.
03:30You won the Kentucky Derby.
03:32So if you're a horse that's bred for longer distances, which they must feel sovereignty
03:37is, then, hey, two out of three legs, still a pretty good payday when it's all said and
03:42done.
03:43But you can't risk a horse if you don't think it's in its best interest in order to be
03:47able to race because the triple crown is alive and well.
03:51Yeah, because and I get that point, too.
03:53It's like I'm not looking at this and like, hey, man, like we came up and the hoof is a
03:57little bit banged up here.
03:58He's got to skip a couple weeks.
03:59Everybody understands that from a human standpoint, right?
04:01Like nobody wants to put an animal in danger.
04:03But I just feel like it's turned into let me just turn this loose because I know I have
04:07a guaranteed profit.
04:08And the only way I don't is, boy, and again, horses are bred differently now where they run
04:13races and they can get hurt.
04:14And it's not like a human being like, OK, I broke my leg.
04:16I'll just go rehab it for three weeks.
04:18Like a broken leg is like a death sentence for a horse at that point.
04:21And I get where they're trying to protect their investment.
04:23But how do we make this better?
04:24Like in the past, like there was a time, Joe, where heavyweight boxing was the king prize
04:30of the world and everybody would watch.
04:32And then it turned into a fallacy because they basically did it to themselves.
04:36Rigging, you know, shots here, avoiding fights, never getting the fights we want to see.
04:40We see all that stuff and other sports do it as well.
04:42Like the NBA, there was a time where everybody played every game unless they were seriously
04:46injured.
04:47Now we don't do that.
04:48It's load management, which again, takes a tax or toll off of the players.
04:51But for the fans, they don't like that in the regular season.
04:54Hey, primetime TNT tonight.
04:56Yeah, the three best players in the games aren't playing.
04:58Oh, are they injured?
04:58No, no, no.
04:59They just decided to take the night off and away you go.
05:01How can horse racing make this better?
05:03Because I understand the old school thought process.
05:05The triple crown is supposed to be hard.
05:07And I get that where it's like, you know what?
05:09You're going to have to race all the way through.
05:10And those are the parameters, which is why it doesn't happen every year.
05:13But if you're just talking about the health of a sport where you want to command interest,
05:17can we make changes by pushing the race back a week or two?
05:21Like I mean, myself would be fine with it because I want to see triple crowns.
05:24I want to see the horses race in each race here.
05:27But is it just too much of the old school mentality?
05:29Nope.
05:30It's the way it's always been.
05:31It's never going to change.
05:32You just can't have a triple crown then.
05:35Yeah, it will.
05:37The problem is, Donnie, is that it's not just one barn, one owner, one situation.
05:42Now you've got syndicates of people who are on the horse and are involved and have a say
05:50into what happens with the horse these days.
05:53And, you know, also, you got to think, if you don't like the track, if you don't think the horse
06:01can win it, then why are you entering it, right?
06:04I mean, that could be the other thing, too, is that if you don't think he can win it,
06:08what you'd rather win the Belmont because you think he's actually bred to come from
06:12that kind of distance.
06:13I mean, it's the longest of all the races.
06:16Maybe that's the race you target.
06:18I just don't think they have enough confidence in the horse here at this point, given the
06:22circumstances that they're going to go ahead and run him in a race that they don't feel
06:26he can win.
06:28Like, just back in the day, being from like the Philadelphia area, Barbaro, Smarty Jones,
06:32like they captivated an entire region for like a month and a half.
06:35They were good enough to win, though.
06:37Yeah.
06:37They were good enough to win.
06:39Because when you sit back and say to yourself, like, oh, my goodness, like, this is so much
06:42fun.
06:43And, yes, horse racing can make a rebirth.
06:44Like, that's what drives the public interest.
06:46I understand that the staunch people that say, you can't change things up.
06:49It's the way it's always been.
06:50But if you want horse racing to survive, like the Triple Crown race is why people tune in
06:54to this point.
06:55And the more people involved, the more money you make, the more eyeballs on it.
06:58You can turn some of these horses into true superstars.
07:01It's just a shame we won't see that even in the Preakness.