(CHICAGO, IL – April 26, 2010) It is about this time each year that people begin talking about changing the Triple Crown. Because a horse hasn’t swept the hallowed spring series of Classics for 3-year-olds since 1978, critics of its current description feel compelled to suggest how to improve it. The argument for change rests with the idea that the scheduling and distances are not suitable for producing another champion. Moreover, the proponents of change believe that adjustments to the current format would accommodate the state of breeding and horse training better.

Two fallible positions accompany the debate between preservationists and progressives. The first is that everything should stay the way it is because that’s the way it’s always been. The other is that the status quo is no longer relevant considering the way the sport has developed. Both opinions have large followings. Yet as long as opposition to the second exists, proponents of the other won’t budge. This week, the Breeders’ Cup delayed its decision to name Santa Anita the permanent site despite two years of study. Study is horse racing’s steady occupation.

“You go a mile and an eighth and win the Kentucky Derby. Then, three weeks later, you add a sixteenth of a mile to go in the Preakness. Then you add three more weeks and you get a mile and a quarter in the Belmont,” D. Wayne Lukas proposed to the paulickreport.com this past week. “Now you’ve got a series,” the Hall of Fame trainer added, suggesting that his plan would benefit breeders as well as the sport’s marketing interests.

Lukas would shorten the distances of two of the three races and add an extra week between the Derby and the Preakness. His idea for changing the spacing seems hardly worth the effort. Three weeks between races instead of two isn’t enough of a break to convince most trainers that an extra seven days would result in respite. Furthermore, Lukas’s proposed changes for race distances merely accommodate a failure of breeders to recognize stamina as commercially significant.

“By lengthening (the Triple Crown’s) duration from five weeks to nine, the series would be far less stressful,” John Pricci, executive editor of HorseRaceInsider.com, wrote six months after Barbaro broke down. “More Derby horses would run back in a Preakness, if the second leg were held on the first Saturday in June. And more Derby and Preakness horses would run back in the July 4 Belmont,” Pricci conjectured. The veteran horse racing writer warned, “A longer series would be easier on the horses but also conceivably more difficult to win,” reinforcing a notion that’s been proffered repeatedly.

Modern-day training methods have contributed to making the Triple Crown easier than ever to win. With only two weeks separating the first two legs of the Triple Crown, the Derby winner is usually confronted with a soft Preakness field. Few trainers of runners that fall short in the Derby are willing to wheel them back in a fortnight without having the opportunity to win the Triple Crown.

Consequently, in seven of its last dozen renewals, the Belmont Stakes has offered the possibility of a Triple Crown coronation. This circumstance has boosted attendance by 90 percent, increased the handle enormously and doubled the television rankings. And, as a result, because economic advantage, not theatrics, determines everything that happens in horse racing these days, it’s unlikely that the New York Racing Association, facing hardship, would forsake such results to help the sport.

“The timing of the races is usually controlled by the networks with the tracks – all geared to increasing the ratings,” said Ed Seigenfeld, who served as the executive vice president of Triple Crown Productions for 20 years. “The issue of moving the Preakness has been talked to death,” he said. When asked if one racecourse could force a change by moving forward independently, Seigenfeld said, “There is no formal document that prohibits any of the tracks from acting unilaterally, but they have generally discussed things with each other on an informal basis and there is an unwritten rule that they will check with each other on any major changes.”

Obviously, it would take a real central authority to mandate revisions that would make the Triple Crown more competitive, more lucrative and smarter in ways that would improve the thoroughbred breed, capture the imagination of fans and serve the interest of horses’ safety. Even then, there’d be no guarantee that the revisions would go as far as they could to be meaningful.

Enthusiasm for the Triple Crown in the USA runs high because the series presents challenges beyond reason. Asking 3-year-olds to run a mile and a quarter on the first Saturday in May tests early maturity. Summoning the young horses back to the track two weeks later in another long race, albeit one that is run differently, tests their versatility. Twelve furlongs, three weeks later, may be the traditional Classic distance, but pedigrees today feature speed at the cost of stamina. In that respect, the third jewel defies trend. From this perspective, the more you’d water down the existing matrix, the more you’d take away from what makes our country’s Triple Crown better than others.

England has subscribed to a Triple Crown since 1853 and, for all intents and purposes, it hasn’t changed substantively from inception. British racing has had 15 Triple Crown champions; Nijinsky was the last to sweep the three races in 1970. From time to time, some people will argue that the third and final leg – the St. Leger Stakes, which is run over one mile and six furlongs at Doncaster - should be replaced by another race in the series. Separated by four months from the first two legs, many winners of the 2000 Guineas and Epsom Derby, including Sea the Stars – Europe’s Horse of the Year, have bypassed it in the last several decades.

Fourteen racing jurisdictions in all, as widely diverse as Australia and Venezuela, honor the Triple Crown tradition and several have been recognizing its achievement for well over a century. Even though the series is a hodgepodge of lesser races with little significance in many places, there have been fewer than 75 Triple Crown champions worldwide throughout history. No country, other than England, has had more than 11 - the American number. That, in itself, makes the genus rare.

Vic Zast presents his observations of horse racing each day on Twitter.com and Facebook.com.