Horse Racing’s Triple Crown May Be Dead After Churchill Downs and NYRA Cut Out the Preakness

Horse racing’s Triple Crown, already a fading storyline for casual fans in recent years, may have just taken its most serious hit yet. Churchill Downs Incorporated and the New York Racing Association announced Monday the formation of the Thoroughbred Championship Series, a new six-race, $5 million bonus series for three-year-olds beginning in 2027 — and the Preakness Stakes, the middle jewel of the Triple Crown, is nowhere on the schedule.

The series links two of the sport’s three most powerful stakeholders, Churchill Downs and NYRA, while leaving Maryland’s Pimlico Race Course and the Maryland Jockey Club completely outside the new arrangement. That has fueled speculation that the sport’s decades-old Triple Crown tradition, built around the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes, is being quietly sidelined in favor of a new points-based championship model.

What the New Series Actually Includes

The inaugural 2027 Thoroughbred Championship Series is set to run across five months and three tracks. According to the announcement, the schedule includes the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs on May 1, the Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park on June 5, the Matt Winn Stakes back at Churchill Downs in July, the Jim Dandy Stakes at Saratoga Race Course in late July or early August, the Travers Stakes at Saratoga in late August, and a newly created championship race at Churchill Downs in September.

A unified points system will track performance across all six races, with the $5 million bonus pool awarded based on final standings — separate from the purses of the individual races. Organizers say the format is designed to push top three-year-olds to face each other more often across a full season rather than converging only for a few spring weeks. Broadcast coverage will be split between NBC for the Churchill Downs races and Fox for the events at Belmont Park and Saratoga.

Why the Preakness Was Left Out

The absence of the Preakness is the detail drawing the most attention. Churchill Downs sold back the intellectual property rights to the Preakness for $85 million in a deal with the state of Maryland earlier this year, after Maryland stepped in to fund the race’s future amid the redevelopment of Pimlico. With that transaction complete, Churchill Downs and NYRA moved forward on their own championship framework without Maryland at the table.

The Preakness itself isn’t going away — it’s expected to return to a renovated Pimlico in 2027 after a temporary relocation to Laurel Park in 2026 — but its traditional slot two weeks after the Kentucky Derby has increasingly clashed with how modern trainers space out their horses’ schedules. Notably, Monday’s plan keeps the Belmont Stakes in its traditional spot five weeks after the Derby, suggesting the coordination behind this new series happened without meaningful input from Maryland racing officials.

What It Means for the Triple Crown’s Future

The Triple Crown as a concept technically still exists — any horse that wins the Derby, Preakness, and Belmont in the same year still claims the sport’s most storied achievement. But with Churchill Downs and NYRA now steering incentives, purse money, and national broadcast real estate toward a season-long series that skips the Preakness entirely, trainers and owners have a clear new financial and competitive path that doesn’t require racing at Pimlico at all.

Industry voices have already framed the move as a business decision rather than a sentimental one. Churchill Downs Incorporated is a publicly traded company, and pairing its two biggest properties with NYRA’s Belmont Park and Saratoga Race Course creates a longer, more lucrative broadcast and sponsorship window than the traditional five-week Triple Crown sprint ever offered. The Preakness, run at a smaller and less commercially dominant track, simply wasn’t part of that calculation once Churchill Downs no longer held a financial stake in the race.

The plan is also notable for what it leaves unresolved. The exact July date for the Matt Winn Stakes, along with the late-summer dates for the Jim Dandy and Travers Stakes, have not yet been finalized. Full details on the nomination process, eligibility rules, and how the $5 million bonus pool will actually be distributed among the leading point-earners are expected to be released in the coming months, according to the joint announcement from Churchill Downs and NYRA.

Why Bettors Should Pay Attention

That shift matters well beyond the racetrack. Horse racing remains a significant market for sports bettors, and a restructured championship calendar could reshape how sportsbooks price futures markets and how bettors track the sport’s biggest storylines across a five-month season instead of a compressed five-week sprint each spring. For fans looking to follow the action as the new series rolls out, checking a sportsbook review before signing up anywhere new is a smart first step, since coverage of niche markets like horse racing futures varies widely between operators.

If the Thoroughbred Championship Series performs the way Churchill Downs and NYRA are betting it will, the sport’s biggest annual storyline could look very different within a few years — five months of build toward a fall championship race, rather than a frantic five-week chase for a Triple Crown that fewer and fewer horses even attempt anymore.