Op-Ed: No Alibi for Not Supporting Preakness Traditions

This morning hurt my heart. Anyone who has talked with me or followed my writing knows how much I love the Alibi Breakfast, held Thursday each year before the Preakness Stakes (G1).

It is an age-old event for the racing community to gather in the Pimlico Race Course clubhouse dining room and welcome the visiting stars, pray for safe journeys, eat (and drink) well on nice white tablecloths, present the Old Hilltop Award for meritorious service to racing, the Jerry Frutkoff Award for best photograph from the prior year's Preakness, and the David F. Woods Award for best story. 

It is traditional for the trainers and owners arriving from the Kentucky Derby (G1) to, one at a time, give their excuses—their alibis—for why their horses lost on the first Saturday in May and then explain how they can turn the table in the Preakness. It is a time for storytelling and silly jokes. It is a time for mingling. The breakfast renews ties to the past in the present for the future. It is full of hovering spirits. 

Today, it was not. 

The dining room was half-empty May 18 but full of murmurs of concern. None of the Kentucky Derby runners except the winner Mage  are even in the Preakness, the first time since 1948 only one horse pressed forward to the second leg of racing's Triple Crown. 

So, no developing rivalries to follow. Just some shiny and suspect new shooters from the second or even third divisions of the national racing armies of powerful trainers Brad Cox, Steve Asmussen, and Chad Brown. 

Not a single representative from those three camps bothered to attend. This, not that you need me to remind you, is for one of the sport's most important races. These more important people couldn't be bothered. 

They simply ignored the ceremonial breakfast that is part of what makes the Preakness so special. Back in the day, not that long ago, the trainers always talked about how they most looked forward to the Preakness among the Triple Crown races because of its relative intimacy and the personal care from management. I can't speak to the management today, at this moment, other than to say I'm not thrilled with it, but I found the absence of the connections disgraceful. You used to see the trainers banter and rib each other, surrounded by family and owners, putting away the bacon and hash browns, having a good old time. Now, they act like they have something to hide and nothing they owe.

At least Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey, lonely amongst the empty tables of the other connections, was there representing his longshot Perform, and I went over and thanked him for respecting the breakfast tradition. 

"I appreciate that, John," Shug said. "I thought I should be here." 

Why is it so hard for someone, anyone, from the other entrants to enjoy a communal breakfast and say a few words? What is wrong with the priorities of these people? When the racing industry is on the ropes, why can't the participants at the highest level of the game be bothered to do something other than cater to their own self-interest? What exactly do they enjoy beyond their own greed? 

Granted, the trainers may have been at Timonium for the sale breezes, but anyone—a groom?—could have come to the breakfast. Certainly, someone in the ownership should be there. 

The Preakness dates to 1873. That would be a very long time ago, 52 years before half the homes in the country had electricity. The race is a who's who of the sport's legends, and Pimlico, no matter what the largely ignorant present ownership thinks, is hallowed racing ground, a living museum of stories of lives. 

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Secretariat. How was that for a story? 

The Preakness is one of the most historic treasures in all of racing, and its inability to renew its value would be a disaster for a sport already facing assaults, self-inflicted and external, as well as calamity on many fronts. 

Yet its most powerful participants can't be bothered to do more than bring over a fancy horse and hope to get the money and get out of town, on to the next pillaging. It's a numbers game, a money game, just another hedge for an expensive suit who's smarter than you. 

These people are a far cry from Shug McGaughey, who maintains his respect for those who came before and the foundations they built for those to come. Even the creator of modern racing divisions, D. Wayne Lukas, would never think to skip an Alibi Breakfast if he had a horse running in the Preakness. He shows up every time he runs with his appetite and tall tales and the best off-color jokes he can think up.

Local trainer John Salzman Jr. is running a likely outgunned longshot named Coffeewithchris  this year in the Preakness. Salzman had to scrape together the $30,000 it cost him to enter. That kind of money is a sneeze without a tissue for Brad Cox. The Salzman family has been racing around the Maryland ovals since around 1979. They specialize in cheap horses, because that's what they and their owners can afford, not six-figure deities delivered encased in gold to them by impossibly rich syndicates or sheikhs.

Salzman came to the Alibi Breakfast. He looked scruffy in his blue jeans and boots, like he'd been working in the barn all morning. I'm sure he had. When it came time to speak, one of the few there to do so, he started to thank his help, his groom, and his hot walkers, and then he started to cry, and a lump welled up in my throat and I tried not to cry along with him. Finally, I thought, someone who gets it, someone who feels the magnitude of what this is supposed to be, someone who represents the sacrifice and the hard work of being a hands-on horseman, morning after morning, seven days a week and Christmas. Someone who grew up going to bed at night dreaming of the Preakness and then, after awhile, just started going to bed and straight to sleep. 

Suddenly, there's a horse in the barn that has brought the boy's dream back, and he looks at all the years of his life feeling for warm ankles and mixing feed and missing stuff his friends take for granted, and he gets together $30,000 and feels it's all coming down to this one chance to grab something big. 

Salzman has sent out 24 starters this year that have earned $235,935. Brad Cox has had more than 300 starters that have earned more than $11.9 million. If somehow Salzman wins the Preakness, it will be the greatest day of his life. If Cox wins, he might be at the airport before sundown and on to filling the next money bag. He's running horses at four different tracks this weekend.

These big boys run through a lot of horses. Unlike Salzman, they don't have to nurse the incorrect ones and the sore ones to health and, with luck, to the starting gate and hopefully get them to win a few bucks to keep the operation, which is a life for them—their heart and soul—going a little bit longer. If a horse can't run at the highest level or make it as a broodmare, it's out of the Cox barn double quick to who knows where. 

Cox and Asmussen race in New York and Arkansas and Louisiana and Kentucky and Texas and Indiana and other places all at the same time. When you get that big, and you've earned $412 million in your career, why in the world would you stoop to making dumb small talk with the hicks and the rabble at some two-bit breakfast in a rundown town? You've got more important things to do.

God bless Shug, John Salzman, the people behind Mage, and, of course, Pimlico and the Preakness. One thing's for sure, who I bet on Saturday and who I want to win will be two completely different things. 

John Scheinman, a long-time contributor to BloodHorse, is a two-time Eclipse Award winner.