I was watching some longshot colt named Rombauer sprint past the favorite Medina Spirit in last Saturday’s 146th running of the Preakness Stakes when I thought of the immortal words of my old friend, Clem Florio.
“The Preakness,” he always said, “is the greatest two minutes in sports.”
Well, a Baltimore cynic might ask, what’s the sporting alternative these days? Watching the Orioles slip depressingly into last place? Reading another gripping newspaper piece — in May! — about the Ravens hoping to pick up some backup interior lineman?
But Clem knew what he was talking about. He was the horse race handicapper for The News American in its glory days, and then made his selections for The Washington Post, and later served as the odds maker at Pimlico. He knew horse racing, and he knew real excitement.
And as you watched Rombauer in the home stretch suddenly turning on the jets, and winning the Preakness by three-and-a-half lengths, you could find yourself cheering out loud even if you didn’t have money on the race.
Although money helps.
I am sometimes reminded, by the attorney and lobbyist Alan Rifkin, that the popularity of thoroughbred horse racing is measured in more than the paltry crowds that show up at all those tracks around America.
Rifkin was one of the key players in the recent deal to salvage racing history in Baltimore, including the massive rehab and redevelopment of the track and grandstand at Pimlico, and the agreement to keep the Preakness here instead of moving it to Laurel.
Yes, he repeatedly points out, racing’s having a rough time drawing actual spectators – but with modern technology, the betting on horse racing is higher than it’s ever been, well over a billion dollars a year.
So Saturday’s running of the Preakness had almost everything we want out of the racing game: terrific excitement as Rombauer sprinted down the stretch; political theater, in the aftermath of Medina Spirit’s failed drug test; and plenty of money.
The only thing it didn’t have was a lot of people in the stands.
But let’s not blame racing for that. As the pandemic grinds on, attendance was limited. Two years ago, Preakness Day drew about 130,000 people. This year, about 10,000.
When Joe DeFrancis owned Pimlico, he used to lament that Preakness Day was the one day of the year when the track actually made money. He was old enough – almost – to remember a different time, when baseball, boxing and horse racing were the three biggest sports in America.
Now we’ve got the New Yorker magazine with a brand new piece headlined, “Can Horse Racing Survive?” No, not if we judge it strictly by those empty seats at tracks all over the country.
Yes, if we judge by the amount people are wagering as they sit in front of their computers.
And, yes, if we judge by the excitement of some longshot like Rombauer bursting down the stretch to climax “the greatest two minutes in sports.”
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” was reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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