In covering a Belmont Stakes like no other, NBC’s Kenny Rice has one big worry
Kenny Rice began covering horse racing for NBC Sports in 1999. In all that time, he has never had an assignment like the one he will undertake Saturday at the Belmont Stakes.
“This might be the only event I ever cover where I am going to have a PPE package sent to me this week by NBC,” Rice said Thursday. “I’ll be getting the gloves, the mask and the disposable thermometers so I can take my temperature every day before I go to (Belmont Park).”
The coronavirus pandemic and the efforts to contain it have wreaked havoc this year with the three most prestigious races in North American horse racing.
Moved out of its traditional spot as the third jewel of the Triple Crown, this year’s Belmont Stakes will be the opening race.
Instead of facing the mile-and-a-half “Test of the Champion,” the 3-year-old horses competing in the Belmont will race only a mile-and-an-eighth.
Rather than a grandstand packed with boisterous New Yorkers, the 2020 Belmont Stakes will be run without fans.
How NBC Sports will telecast the race has also been transformed by the coronavirus. The network will have its broadcast hosts working from a studio in Stamford, Conn. It will have at least two race analysts stationed in their homes.
Rice will be among a skeleton crew reporting from the track.
“It’s exciting to be a part of something that’s different,” Rice said. “We get used to covering sporting events sometimes by rote. ‘This is going to happen in this month, then this is going to happen in the (following) month.’ Well, this year, everything has changed.”
Though the New York City metropolitan area has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, Rice, 63, is not afraid to visit.
However, due to reductions in airline capacity caused by COVID-19, Rice said trying to book flights to get him from Lexington to New York when he needs to get there has been the big worry.
“We’re going through a couple of travel scenarios, and we are also working on a backup plan should a flight be canceled or whatever,” Rice said. “I didn’t have this much problem when I flew to Greece to cover my first Olympics (in 2004).”
Had the pandemic not turned the world upside down, the Kentucky Derby would have been run May 2; the Preakness Stakes on May 16; and the Belmont on June 6.
Now, the Belmont will go June 20, followed by the Derby (Sept. 5) and the Preakness (Oct. 3).
In the great debate over whether this year would produce a legitimate Triple Crown winner should a horse win all three races, Rice answered with a qualified yes.
“They would be a Triple Crown winner. I would say that, because they did win all three races,” Rice said. “But I also think this would be one where a lot of purists, especially, would want to put an asterisk next to it. And I can understand that.”
Rather than the normal five-week Triple Crown season, this year there will be 11 weeks between the Belmont and the Derby, then four more weeks until the Preakness.
Should a trainer be able to keep a horse in top form long enough to win three marquee races spread over such a long timeline, “I think that would really be an impressive training feat if somebody pulls it off,” Rice said.
The story so far of this year’s elongated trail to the Triple Crown has been attrition due to injuries.
Bob Baffert’s star-packed, one-two punch of Nadal (career-ending condylar fracture) and Charlatan (ankle injury) as well as trainer Brendan Walsh’s unbeaten Maxfield (condylar fracture) have all been sidelined.
Of the horses left, Rice said Florida Derby champ Tiz the Law, running for the same owners and trainer that had 2003 Kentucky Derby winner Funny Cide, is the horse to beat in the Belmont.
“A really good horse. He could be the star of this 3-year-old season,” Rice said. “You look at the attrition we’ve seen among the other top horses, you have to give (trainer Barclay Tagg) credit for the fact this horse is still healthy.”
A Floyd County native who fell in love with horse racing while a University of Kentucky student on a 1979 visit to Keeneland, Rice will always hold the Kentucky Derby in his highest esteem.
However, many of the signature moments in his career with NBC have come from conducting interviews after the Belmont Stakes.
Especially memorable were the “sore loser rant” of California Chrome owner Steve Coburn after that horse’s try for the 2014 Triple Crown failed and an interview with an emotional Baffert after American Pharoah (2015) claimed the first Triple Crown since 1978.
This year, there’s little that is normal about how the Belmont Stakes will be run — or broadcast.
“Knowing that everything is going to be so different this year, it’s a big adjustment for me — and probably everybody else,” Rice said. “But it’s still a Triple Crown race. That gets the adrenaline pumping, that and knowing we are going to be a part of something that may never happen again.”
Belmont Stakes
When: Saturday, June 20
Where: Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y.
Post time: About 5:42 p.m. ET
TV: NBC-18
