No matter what you read in the Los Angeles Times

I awoke on May 20, the day after the Preakness Stakes (G1), and hopped on-line to read the news. One of my usual morning stops is the Los Angeles Times Web site. By then, I had already stopped by the Thoroughbred Times and a few other sites, and it was abundantly clear that Preakness day had been a roaring success by every conceivable measure. Handle was up, on-track attendance was a record, and the television ratings had risen markedly.

Yet, as I scrolled down through the Times sports page, I caught this headline, "Another Crowning Blow for a Desperate Sport."

The writer, Diane Pucin, took the opportunity of a glorious Preakness day to write the predictably trite story pronouncing racing dead. The story is one we have all seen before. The fact that she wrote it didn't shock me. It was the timing that took me by surprise.

Not only had Preakness day been an enormous success, but I thought it brought into focus one of the hallmarks of racing: the genuine competitiveness of the sport. Here we had three extraordinary colts, Monarchos, Point Given, and Congaree, plus the talented and mysterious A P Valentine. The race turned out to be competitive, and a memorable one.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how wrong the writer was. She was able to somehow extrapolate the imminent demise of the sport from: 1) a comment made by one man pushing a shopping cart outside of Pimlico ("You know, for 51 weeks a year this place is dead. It's depressing. This week it's okay."); and 2) the fact that NBC's prerace coverage included a five-minute segment on the grand old man of racing, Seattle Slew, which, in the writer's mind, was tantamount to an admission that the sports has had nothing to offer the public since the late 1970s.

With that line of reasoning, if we see a segment on Ben Hogan during coverage of the Professional Golf Association's Championship this summer, it means that golf is in decline. Tiger who?

It is true that today fewer patrons attend Pimlico on a daily basis, or most tracks for that matter, than 30 years ago, but consider:

• More people watch and wager on Thoroughbred racing than ever before.
• Technology has opened up more access-simulcasting, account wagering, Internet wagering, etc.-and therefore fans do not need to travel to tracks to participate in the pari-mutuel experience (and yet, a record number did so at Pimlico on Preakness day).
• Television ratings for the two Triple Crown races were up dramatically this year, the Preakness rating increasing 56%, and that was without the star power of a much-ballyhooed athlete like Fusaichi Pegasus. The hypothesis that racing will die without a superstar is proved wrong by this year's Triple Crown races.
• Handle is up almost everywhere. Pimlico enjoyed record handle on Preakness day, and handle is up across the country, to record levels, despite more competition than ever before for the wagering and entertainment dollar. Handle is driven by competitiveness, not superstars.
• Racetracks are generally doing quite well, Garden State Park aside. Arlington Park has reemerged as a major player. Once dead (or dying) venues in Iowa, Minnesota, Delaware, West Virginia, New Mexico, and Texas are now flourishing.
• The number of hours of television coverage is on the rise. CNBC just inked a deal to carry a series of races for the remainder of the year. There will be more racing on television this year than ever before. Thoroughbred racing now has two television networks devoted exclusively to the sport (golf has but one).

Moreover, superstars do not carry any sport over the long haul. In the end, reliance on a lone superstar puts a sport at risk when that one performer disappears from the scene. Just ask the National Basketball Association about Michael Jordan.

Racing flourishes on the strength of its overall competitiveness. And the Triple Crown races epitomized that trait.

Before the Kentucky Derby (G1), Bob Baffert was certain that he was training a Triple Crown winner in Point Given. He was also convinced that the only horse that had a legitimate chance to beat him was another horse he trained, Congaree. In spite of that fact, Baffert send out Congaree in the Derby in the name of competition.

We respect and venerate the likes of Secretariat and Seattle Slew, and when another superstar comes along, more people will undoubtedly pay attention to racing, but they will leave just as quickly when the star goes away. Racing will not create new fans for the long term with a single superstar.

What is more essential to the long-term success of the sport is competition. And as long as the sport maintains its commitment to competition of the highest level, it will flourish.