When New Mexico trainer Chip Woolley was driving across the continent with his painful broken leg in a splint to enter Mine That Bird in the Kentucky Derby, it probably never occurred to him that horse racing might no longer be worth the effort.
The same goes for the thousands of horsemen and horsewomen who get up in the dark every morning at racing facilities big and small to muck their stalls and dream the Triple Crown dream Woolley is living right now.
Maybe it was just an oversight, but nobody informed them that this is an X Games world now and that most people would rather watch some kid jump off a ramp on a little bicycle or skateboard.
Let me tell you something. Horse racing is one of the original X Games. Those horses look beautiful and graceful from the grandstand - and they are - but don't be fooled. Jockey Calvin Borel was a 110-pound man balanced on a 1,000-pound horse in the middle of a 19-horse stampede as he steered Mine That Bird to victory at Churchill Downs. The drama and danger are real.
But at some point between Seabiscuit's last, late charge and Barbaro's last gasp, a big chunk of the American sporting public lost interest in horse racing, except on a handful of Saturdays in the spring and early summer when the erstwhile "Sport of Kings" elbows baseball out of the way for a few hours and takes back the national stage.
This Saturday, in particular, probably sums the whole thing up for the horse racing naysayers. The 134th Preakness might be the much-anticipated second jewel of the Triple Crown to the dwindling - and aging - faithful, but if you're not from Baltimore, there's a pretty good chance you're wondering why they are making such a fuss over a beat-up old sport at a beat-up old track in a beat-up old town.
Which is too bad because the Preakness means too much to both horse racing and Baltimore to hang in limbo while a bankruptcy court and the Maryland legislature wrangle over its future.
Don't even talk to me about the politics. There was a time when the right decision on slots might have led to the renovation of Pimlico Race Course and a much more stable environment for Maryland's signature sporting event. Now the same politicians who fumbled that political football for much of the past decade and cost the state billions in potential tax revenue are scrambling to create the appearance that they did everything in their power to "save" the Preakness.
