Pure Rubbish

Ah, yes... statistics. Such a marvelously manipulative device, aren't they?

You know, it never ceases to amaze me how the world—particularly in racing, but truly in any arena where the stakes are high and the egos are higher—gravitates toward numbers when they want to substantiate a belief. Not when the truth needs clarity, mind you, but when their agenda demands validation. A carefully plucked percentage here, a curated lap time there—suddenly, mediocrity becomes greatness, and greatness, well... is conveniently forgotten.

You see, people don't want truth. They want reinforcement. A number that sounds authoritative. A metric that aligns with the myth they've already decided to believe. Common sense? Pfft. Common sense doesn't make headlines. It doesn’t trend. But "fastest sector on softs in Q2 during a tailwind"? Oh, now that—that becomes gospel.

I once knew a horse in California. Brilliant. She was constantly knocked, because they said the numbers showed she wasn't fast enough, figure-wise, as if you'd judged her by the stopwatch alone and the mathematics behind the figure makers, yet they would have missed the poetry in the cornering, the elegance in her restraint, or how she finished like a whisper in a cathedral. But there were no stats for heart, just a 1 at the finish line, told you all.

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So yes, when the narrative needs shaping, statistics become the scalpel. But the truth... the real truth? It often bleeds out quietly, unnoticed in the background, while everyone applauds the figures.

Ah, yes… the Derby hangover. It arrives like clockwork every year—mint juleps barely dry on the lips, and already the chatter begins. A chorus of the unseasoned, the uninitiated—those soft-palmed voices of modernity crying out, "Change the Triple Crown!" They want to stretch it, dilute it, string it along the calendar like a summer playlist. "Two weeks is too short!" they say, their outrage bubbling like bad champagne.

But me? I’m putting my foot down.

And for those who still cling to reason—those rare, endangered minds not yet consumed by the viral epidemic of convenience and short memory—I offer this: salvation from the madness. A life raft amid the waves of foolishness pushed upon us by the 21st-century gunslingers—keyboard cowboys armed with stats they don't understand and opinions they haven't earned. They shoot from the hip and reload with clichés, leaving no room for history, no room for greatness.

Let me tell you something about this so-called "problem." There's a current—an undercurrent—that flows from Churchill Downs to Pimlico. It's strong, swift, and only the best can swim it. Two weeks, 14 days, the exact length of time between the Derby and the Preakness. And since 1973, that storied year of Secretariat's conquest, we've seen 53 Kentucky Derbies and, yes, 53 Preaknesses.

Now here’s the part that might fry a few synapses: 42 of those Preakness winners ran back on 14 days’ rest. Forty-two. Not four. Not twenty. Forty-bloody-two. And two of those—Aloma’s Ruler and Deputed Testimony—came back in less than a week. That's not a stat, my dear friends, that’s a declaration. The good ones? They can. They don’t wilt, they rise. They float like Ali and sting just the same as a bee.

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Yes, cheap horses falter in deep tracks or stiff winds or just a little pressure and they go bad like a Strawberry left out in the sun. They’re the ones who need everything to go right—clear trip, perfect surface, a moon in Venus, water on Mars. But the good ones? The great ones? They’ll run on broken glass and ask for more. So when someone suggests we stretch the Triple Crown to suit the soft-bellied, coddling the colts, to create a participation trophy for Thoroughbreds, I say no. In fact, I say hell no.

And don’t point to 2020, that upside-down year when the world was wearing surgical masks and racing ran on fumes. That Preakness was an anomaly, asterisk-worthy at best. Remove that, and what you’re left with is 52 traditional renditions of the Preakness since 1973—and 42 champions who didn’t need more time. They just needed heart.

Ah… now I may stutter, but I won’t stumble. Let me say it again—clearly, slowly, for those in the back rows of the echo chamber:

42 of the last 52 Preakness Stakes winners—yes, forty-two—were running back on 14 days' rest or less. I invite you, no, I implore you, to lace up your digital sneakers and sprint, not walk, to your Wikipedia, your Equibase, your dusty archives of denial. Go ahead, wage that noble battle so many have tried and so very few have survived: the desperate, ego-driven campaign to prove that I—yours truly—am wrong.

Please… have at it. I'll wait. I have an exquisite bottle of Brunello di Montalcino and a front-row seat for the show.

Now, why does this matter? Why do I care that someone out there is frantically cooking up a narrative in a cast-iron pan of selective memory? Because this—this—is the rot at the root. We don’t seek truth anymore. No, we manufacture it. We bend numbers until they plead for mercy. We pluck context-free stats from thin air, dress them in bravado and parade them around like they’re gospel.

It’s not truth we’re after. It’s vindication. For our biases. Our bets. Our fragile, untested theories about what’s fair or feasible.

But here’s the truth, plain and unfiltered: good horses run. Anywhere. Anytime. Against anyone. They don’t check the calendar. They don’t ask for accommodations. They don’t wilt because the turnaround is tight. They rise. They show up. And most importantly—they win.

You can space the Triple Crown out however your imagination sees fit. Stretch it like taffy from Derby to Halloween if it makes you feel better. But you know what you’ll still have?

Cheap horses.

Cheap in pedigree. Cheap in constitution. Cheap in courage. They don’t get better with more rest—they just get more time to think about losing.

So mark my words: the winner of the 2025 Preakness will have raced within 14 days or less. Just like the 42 champions before him. Because greatness doesn’t need time. Greatness takes it.