Betting on the Bird

I don't know what the odds will be on each horse when the Preakness field bursts through the gates at Pimlico tomorrow.

But I do know one group that will be virtually unanimous in its support for Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird — the folks who are affiliated with the Belmont.

The Belmont, of course, is the third jewel in horse racing's Triple Crown. If the winner of the Derby doesn't win the Preakness, the Belmont becomes primarily an afterthought. TV ratings are down, wagers are down, everything is down.

So, every year, the folks who are connected to the Belmont want the Derby winner to prevail in Baltimore on the third Saturday in May. It doesn't matter to them if that horse proceeds to win the Belmont in June as long as there is a chance that there will be a Triple Crown winner.

Because that means more bets, a bigger crowd, more food and drink sales.

And that can only happen if the Derby winner also wins the Preakness.

The Belmont folks always have motivation to pull for the Derby winner in the Preakness. But this year, with the economy decidedly down, there is more motivation than usual.

Mason Levinson reports, for Bloomberg.com, that the New York Racing Association estimates that, if Mine That Bird enters the Belmont with victories in both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, it can mean "as much as $3 million extra from ticket sales, concessions and betting."

That's quite an incentive. It's been more than 30 years since there was a Triple Crown winner. If there is a chance that the winner of the Belmont will be the one who ends the Triple Crown drought, obviously a lot of folks will want to be there to see it.

"The most recent of horse racing's 11 Triple Crown winners was Affirmed in 1978," Levinson observes. "Eleven horses have won the first two legs since then — seven in the past 12 years — and all have failed to win on the 1½–mile Belmont track just outside New York City in Elmont. The Derby is 1¼ mile, the Preakness is 1 3/16 mile."

According to George Vecsey of the New York Times, Mine That Bird is the Rodney Dangerfield of horse racing.

"Sometimes there is no respect," Vecsey writes, "even for a Kentucky Derby winner."

Vecsey says there are at least four reasons why Mine That Bird "is being played down" on the eve of the Preakness — "the suspicion that he got lucky in the Derby; the entrance of Rachel Alexandra, the wonder filly; the defection of Calvin Borel, who took such an audacious ride in the Derby; and the apparent insecurity of his ownership."

My guess is that, if Mine That Bird wins tomorrow, he'll get plenty of respect in New York in three weeks — and the folks at the Belmont will be laughing all the way to the bank.