Courtesy of HorseRaceInsider.com

Barron’s, last week, asked this question: “This economy keeps dispensing with decades of statistical precedent. We have a 23-year-high inventory of unsold homes, a 49-year-low in per-capita home sales, a 28-year-low in consumer confidence, and an all-time high in inflation-adjusted oil prices. With it all, is it impressive of inexplicable that the Standard & Poor’s 500 is merely at a one-month low, and just 12% below an all-time high?”

Impressively or inexplicably, racing mirrors the financial markets. Quite fittingly, Michael Iavarone and others from IEAH Stable and the New York Racing Association were on hand last Wednesday to ring the bell that signals the opening of trading on the New York Stock exchange, a place, it turns out, with which the suddenly high-profile ex boiler-room penny stock dealer was altogether unfamiliar. By then, Bloomberg News and others had exposed Iaverone's claim to have come from the hedge fund world as ... well, a lie -- and hardly a little white one.

Scoffing as decades of statistical precedent embraced by those who made cases against his Kentucky Derby prospects based upon long-cured, Big Brown remains undefeated less than a week before he will attempt to sweep the Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes. Like those holding short positions in the S&P 500, who await the return of cold reality on Wall Street, they observe the current events in and around Barn 2 at Belmont Park and attempt to weigh their potential to thwart Big Brown.

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Bill Christine, HorseRaceInsider.com

You'll need a scorecard for the 133rd running of the Preakness. Yankee Bravo? That name sort of rings a bell. Behindatthebar? Seems familiar. Giant Moon? I remember him. Vaguely. The Preakness has always been a haven for the Triple Crown's new shooters, but this is ridiculous. This isn't a field, it's a road company of "Ben-Hur." These were the understudies for the Kentucky Derby. They weren't good enough to run in Louisville, and now some of their names will actually be hung on the marquee in Baltimore. This Saturday, Pimlico should let everybody in on twofers.

What happened to Denis of Cork? Didn't he earn enough shipping money at Churchill Downs? Recapturetheglory, fifth in the Derby, was Preakness-bound for a while, but now he's not scheduled to run. Louie Roussel, his trainer, says that Recapturetheglory has a temperature. Roussel may have also noticed that his horse finished 11 3/4 lengths behind Big Brown in the Derby.

There have been some pretty bland Preaknesses--the 1982 running, which didn't even have Gato Del Sol, the Derby winner, comes to mind--but unless Big Brown wins by 50 lengths or sends the timer spinning, this version is as pale as an albino, and will be as thrilling as fishing through the ice. It figures to be as one-sided as a bullfight. Rick Dutrow, who trains Big Brown, said that he'll ship his charge from Kentucky to Maryland on Wednesday, but why bother? Big Brown ought to be able to mail this one in.

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Win, lose or post position draw, this should be the final year that Kentucky Derby eligibility is determined by earnings, graded or otherwise.

The system has outlived its utility and no longer makes sense. Twenty Derby starters is the modern rule, not the exception. And it matters not whether that this year’s draw involving the filly Eight Belles went smoothly. Using any criteria, she earned her way in.

Admission based on earnings is fraught with inequities to the existing prep process too numerous to mention, and in the future it’s bound to get worse because any track could artificially inflate the importance of its prep race by throwing money at it. That might be good for business but it’s bad for the Derby.

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