A Shiny New Triple Crown

Published: September 13, 2010 12:06 pm EDT

Every year around this time there seems to be a debate as to which races should be involved in pacing's Triple Crown. This race should be, this race shouldn't be...here's an idea that involves all races based on another successful Triple Crown model

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Who knows who Joey Votto is? Until last Thursday, I didn't. I like baseball, but I don't follow it as closely as I used to. Yet if there's anyone in Major League Baseball that I should know, it's a Canadian-born baseball player in contention for baseball's elusive Triple Crown - for batters, that consists of leading the league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in (RBIs).

To show how rare this Triple Crown is, the last time a player in the National League won the Triple Crown was 1937. Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski was the last player in MLB to achieve the feat while playing for the Boston Red Sox in 1967....also the same year the Leafs last won the Stanley Cup. A cheap shot? Yes, indeed. Back to racing.

Why not consider a similar Triple Crown model for harness racing? Let's make the Triple Crown winner the three-year-old pacer or trotter that leads the division in wins, money earned and has the fastest winning time.

If we don't include wins, we could include win percentage. Just like with a baseball player's batting average, the winning percentage would require a minimum number of starts on the year. To ensure this also includes the highest caliber of horses, horses would have to start in a set number of Grand Circuit stakes races.

This would eliminate the debate - both for trotters and pacers - as to which races should be involved. It would, however, bring up the discussion of currency conversion. If the majority of races were contested in the U.S., that model would favour earnings converted to U.S. dollars.

By making the number of races and money earned as part of the system, it could give more incentive for horses to race a longer, more competitive season and not duck certain events. This, however, raises the biggest issue - what does the Triple Crown mean? How do you make it meaningful? Here lies one of the key issues. It's just a title. A label. If One More Laugh completes the Triple Crown this year, it won't raise his stud value - he's a gelding, and already a two-time World Record holder.

There must be incentive to race and win the Triple Crown. Nothing provides more incentive than a big wad of cash...the crux being where it comes from.

One idea could be a sponsorship model, wherein a corporate sponsor provides a financial bonus in exchange for title sponsorship of the Triple Crown. Funding would also help create a website like the breederscup360.com site on the thoroughbred side, a site that allows fans to follow the horses on their Triple Crown quest.

To me, a better idea would be if the races themselves also pitched in a percentage of the purses to boost this total. Ideally, a bonus of (at least) $1 million would be on the line, thus providing the single biggest payday of the year. Last year, owners of standardbred horses had the opportunity to race for $29 million in stakes money distributed by the Hambletonian Society alone. As these races would envelope most of the Triple Crown series events, for the sake of argument let's take five per cent off these purses. There's $1.45 million. The take between pacers and trotters might be contentious, and perhaps that money should be split accordingly to percentage of stakes money, with the sponsor portion topping up the Triple Crown bonus to the same amount on each gait.

At the end of the year, the Triple Crown would be won by the horse that danced the most big dances and won them, instead of (especially on the pacing side) the horse that for the most part best handles half-mile track racing and gets the luck of the post draw.

If the Triple Crown isn't won? Here's where we could get creative...the money could go back to the horses as if its in the purse pool in the first place. Or the money could be pooled - in whole or in part - for next year's Triple Crown bonus. These are just a few options and I'm not making a full out sales pitch here. I haven't involved the bettors, the drivers and trainers...for now. This discussion is simply a new way to look at part of the business that many seem to agree needs to be fixed but no one can agree on how. Gee, where have I heard that before...

The floor is open for discussion.

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