With his stunning victory in the Kentucky Derby, the sport’s believers hoped Barbaro could be “what racing needs.” It is no small irony that Barbaro has done more for the sport in his struggle to survive than he might have as a Triple Crown champion.

The day after the Preakness, all three networks featured reports on Barbaro’s operation at Penn's New Bolton Center. Barbaro has made the nightly news every evening since. His name appears regularly in crawls on the all-news cable networks, even if horse lovers hesitate to read them because of radiographs that showed a right hind leg with a plate and 23 screws where three healthy bones used to be.

Barbaro was a subject in a Jay Leno monologue and received well wishes from the op-ed pages of major newspapers in Dallas, Baltimore, Boston and Philadelphia. There are fence posts lined with home made greeting cards and candles from well wishers, and you can make a donation to the New Bolton Center in Barbaro’s name on Penn’s Web site.

Columns have been written decrying the sport and portending a bleak future, and think pieces have acknowledged conflicted feelings and concerns for the sport’s self-inflicted wounds while it publicly wrings its hands over how it can attract new fans. In wake of the premature racing careers of Point Given, Smarty Jones, Afleet Alex, and current national concern for Barbaro’s health, the sport can start to attract new fans by making its glamour event more humane.

My teeth are much longer and hair much grayer since seeing Kelso win the 1961 Met Mile at under 130 pounds. But now I believe tradition is too high a price to pay. With the life-threatening injury to Barbaro, two Triple Crown tracks have an opportunity to do the right thing for today’s thoroughbred, and the sport’s future, even if no one else does.

Following the Belmont Stakes the past three years, I have called for a change in Triple Crown scheduling. This time, I can’t wait and it has nothing to do with the fact that only three of the Derby’s 20 starters showed up in Baltimore for the Preakness. Parenthetically, one sustained a life-threatening injury, another a minor one, with the third back at his home track for a large dose of R&R.

Last year, columnists Bob Ford and Dick Jerardi, and Bloodhorse magazine editor-in-chief Ray Paulick, called attention to the grueling anachronism that has become the Triple Crown. Already this year, Jerardi has written “I have seen enough” and noted author Andrew Beyer now believes an altered schedule “might make sense for the horses …”

Due mostly to a lack of national leadership, tracks in racing states will continue doing only what’s in their best interests. But their selfishness pales in comparison to the greed of the bloodstock marketplace. It began in the late '80s when buyers from Europe and Japan engaged in bidding wars for our blue-blooded stock. It made breeders and bloodstock agents rich but depleted the gene pool.

As yearling prices increased and sales became a much bigger money game than racing, stud farms began to breed for looks and speed, not stamina and durability. Currently chic 2-year-old-in-training sales require that horses breeze extremely fast furlongs of 10 or 11 seconds, before bones have had a chance to set properly.

As a result of all this, today’s horses run faster but not farther, race less often but train harder, compete over faster surfaces while dealing with increased pollution, travel and a racing season that never ends. Most modern sires now have two decades of medication, legal and otherwise, coursing through their veins. And everybody knows it.

A longer Triple Crown series is in the best interests of the horse and, by extension, the sport. By lengthening its duration from five weeks to nine, the series would be far less stressful on today’s thoroughbred and easier for them to compete in more legs of the series. Those that argue it would cheapen the accomplishment of the 11 Triple Crown winners are myopic for not considering that a longer series would be easier on the horses but also conceivably more difficult to win.

An extended series would require horsemen to keep their runners at a high level longer. Competition would deepen, because late foals needing developmental time would catch up to the group. More Derby horses would run back in a Preakness — if the second leg were held on the first Saturday in June. And more Derby and Preakness horses would run back in the July 4 Belmont. What would be more American than an Independence Day classic sandwiched between barbecue and fireworks?

Wouldn’t the sport benefit from an additional four weeks of Triple Crown promotion? Such a schedule would not adversely effect traditional Derby preps or lesser Derbies and there would be no need for changing the dates of the prestigious Haskell and Travers.

Although Sir Barton won the first Triple Crown in 1919, it wasn’t recognized at the time because the term had not yet been invented by the legendary turf writer, Charles Hatton. It wasn’t until 11 years later that Hatton used the term to describe Gallant Fox’s sweep of the 1930 Derby, Preakness and Belmont.

If present day turf writers began to bang this drum, maybe racing would do something good for the speed-bred animals they sell by insisting on a more humane schedule for aspiring classicists. If a turf writer can invent the series, surely a barnful of them can be an instrument for collective good. Or Frank Stronach or the New York Racing Association just could schedule their classics for June’s first Saturday and July 4, respectively. The other track would have to adjust.

Coming back in two weeks might or might not have been a contributing factor in Barbaro’s injury. That is not knowable. The only known is that trainer Michael Matz and others thought it to be a legitimate concern. Matz wanted as much time as possible between Derby preps because he believed he was doing what was best for Barbaro. Last Saturday he had no choice. Nowhere in the rules of racing does it state it must always be that way. from msnbc.com