Courtesy USA Today

(June 5, 2009) TV ratings for the Belmont Stakes are an anomaly. While ratings for many sports events are pretty consistent year-to-year, ratings for the third race of the Triple Crown can vary widely — depending whether there's a horse going for a Triple Crown or at least a supposed showdown between the winners of the first two Crown races.

ABC's Belmont Saturday has neither.

But, it has this: Calvin Borel, who rode Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird and Preakness winner Rachel Alexandra, getting a shot at being the first jockey to win the Crown on different horses.

Why doesn't that seem like much of big deal? Given that jockeys can produce sound bites, endorse products and become TV analysts, it seems odd they don't attract all that much more attention than golf's caddies.

ABC analyst Jerry Bailey rode 5,892 race winners, including six Triple Crown race champs. And Bailey, who'll work Saturday's Belmont coverage, admits jockeys sometimes feel they don't get enough credit: "I suppose we wouldn't be human if we didn't feel that way occasionally."

Generally, he says, horses deserve 90% of the credit for wins — with their human cargo getting 10% — and suggests Mine That Bird wouldn't have won the Derby without Borel aboard. Says Bailey, who picks Dunkirk and Charitable Man to end up in a Belmont photo finish: "If we don't have right horses underneath us, we can't win. We're at the mercy of how we're mounted. … Nobody is more appreciative of horses than jockeys."

But Bailey, who rode Belmont winners in 1991 and 2003, isn't sure what kind of a milestone it would be for Borel to win all three Crown races after winning the Derby then switching horses for the Preakness — and returning to his Derby horse when his Preakness ride wasn't entered in the Belmont.

Technically, he notes, a Triple Crown occurs only when a horse wins it. The idea of a rider having a shot at all three races, he says, "is something that never dawned on me. I never thought it could happen. … Once you take off the horse you won a Derby on, what are the chances you'd ever get back on?"