ITM Telegraph — Big Changes Are Coming: What the New Championship Series Really Means for the Triple Crown | Tuesday, August 4, 2026

In The Money Telegraph

Tuesday, August 4, 2026 · By ITM Staff

Big changes are coming to the sport’s marquee division — and the obituaries for the Triple Crown are already being written. We think they’re premature.

Big Changes Are Coming. But The Triple Crown Isn’t Dead Yet (It Might Take a Year Off).

On Monday, Churchill Downs Inc. and the New York Racing Association announced the Thoroughbred Championship Series — a six-race, season-long championship for 3-year-olds that begins in 2027, runs from the first Saturday in May across five months, and carries a $5 million bonus pool on top of purses of at least $1 million per race, all on NBC and Fox. The series links the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont Stakes, and the Travers with the Matt Winn and the Jim Dandy, plus a season-ending championship race still to be created. CDI’s Bill Carstanjen called it one of the most significant developments in the sport in decades, and on its face it’s a serious, well-funded attempt to keep casual fans engaged with the sport’s young stars long after the Derby roses have wilted.

But one name is conspicuously missing: the Preakness Stakes. The middle jewel of the Triple Crown — along with the Haskell and the Pennsylvania Derby — is not part of the series. Cue the eulogies. “The Triple Crown may be dead,” ran one headline; “a death knell,” warned another. To paraphrase Mark Twain, we think reports of the Triple Crown’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

Here’s the context the doomsaying tends to skip. This looks, for now, like Maryland’s move as much as anyone’s. Back in April, CDI had agreed to buy the Preakness’s intellectual property for $85 million; instead, Maryland exercised its right of first refusal and paid the $85 million itself to keep the race in state hands, a deal finalized just last week. Having chosen independence, Maryland now controls its own destiny — and it still hasn’t set a 2027 Preakness date, with a long-discussed move to three weeks after the Derby among the options. In other words, the pieces are still very much in motion.

And listen to the principals. NYRA’s David O’Rourke went out of his way to call the series “a foundation” and “the beginning,” leaving the door explicitly open to adding other tracks and races — the Preakness included — down the road. He was equally clear that the series is meant to sit alongside the Triple Crown, not to replace it. Even Bob Baffert, welcoming the new series on X, kept the perspective that matters: “The greatest achievement in racing will always be winning the Triple Crown.”

So what happens next is genuinely TBD. It’s possible this hardens into a permanent split, with the Preakness orphaned. It’s also possible — and to our eye, more likely once the dust settles — that cooler heads prevail, that Maryland and the series find one another, and that a smarter, better-spaced championship gets built with the Preakness fitting neatly into it. That may not happen for 2027 or 2028. But over the longer horizon — 2028 and beyond — there is a real path to a structure that is demonstrably better than the one we’ve been limping along with, in which the Preakness has spent recent years starved of the Derby’s best horses anyway.

The Triple Crown has survived a lot in 150 years, including being run out of order and out of season as recently as 2020. We think it will survive this, too — and there’s a version of this story where the sport comes out the other side stronger. This is a story that we and everyone else in the industry will be watching closely. We’d imagine a Maryland response will be coming posthaste.

Quick Note: Western Warrior Takes the Manitoba Derby

Out west, the chalk held: Western Warrior justified 2-1 favoritism in Monday night’s 78th Manitoba Derby at Assiniboia Downs, digging in under Dane Nelson to win the nine-furlong first jewel of the Western Canadian Triple Crown in a driving finish. It was a marquee night for the Winnipeg oval, which sent its ASD Jackpot Pick 5 to a mandatory payout with a carryover north of $400,000 — the kind of guarantee that pulls serious money into a pool from well beyond Manitoba.

Back at Presque Isle

Chance Rains had a good Monday in Erie, tipping the Satin and Lace winner Lost and Found among a handful of others, and he’s right back at it with a full Presque Isle card today. His safest-looking spot is Vinsanity in Race 3, a horse riding a three-race win streak with red-hot Israel Rodriguez — fresh off the Satin and Lace score — in the irons. Read the card →

More all week at inthemoneypodcast.com, with daily previews on the ITM YouTube channel and premium tips on ITM Plus.