The Kentucky Derby may be the longest-running athletic event in America, it may be the “fastest two minutes in sports” and it may be the most iconic horse race in the country.

But it was not always the opener of the Triple Crown.

Every year since 1932, the Derby has kicked off that trio that also includes the Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes. But this year, the Derby will be run on Sept. 5, pushed out of its constant first Saturday in May date by the coronavirus outbreak. But from 1923 to 1931, the Preakness preceded the Derby. And to see it play out in the newspapers of the time, the re-ordering of the races in 1932 to its modern form was as bombastic as it was petty.

The dominoes began to fall when the Maryland Jockey Club — “arbitrarily,” in the words of the Cincinnati Enquirer — selected May 14 as the date for the 1932 Preakness. That had been the Saturday that the Derby had been held for the previous decade, including 1922, when both races were held on the same day.

Typically held on a weekday, the Preakness was run on a Saturday in 1931, which the New York Times called “revolutionary,” and the Jockey Club decided to make another big change by picking to run its marquee race on the Derby’s standard day.

Derby organizers were left with a choice: to compete with the Preakness on May 14; to run it on May 21; towards the end of the meet; or to run ahead of the Preakness, on May 7. They went with May 7, shifting the previous decade’s order of events.

“So again the Kentucky management bows to the wishes of the unfair Maryland organization,” the Enquirer wrote in Dec. 1931.

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At this time, even the Baltimore Sun admitted that the Derby was the “most famous of American turf classics,” but it opined that the Derby’s decision to precede the Preakness would be detrimental, illustrated in the headline: “Glamour Drops Off Derby And Increases Hue of Preakness.”

“Kentucky, long a horseman’s paradise, is not what it once was,” the Sun wrote. “It still has its breeding farms, its blue grass and limestone country, but little by the little, the glamour of the sport is fading like a last rose of summer.”

Pimlico’s announcement that the Preakness would take place on what had been Derby’s Saturday created national headlines. Across the country in Dec. of 1931 and January of 1932, newspapers reported that, in a shocking twist, the Derby would lead off.

A common belief of the time was that momentum from the first race would create a buzz for the second. And the Derby was surrendering that momentum, agreeing to run first and stimulating the Preakness.

“It has caused alarm among the folks who are afraid the Derby might lose some prestige,” the Chicago Tribune wrote at the time.

However, Screw Sanders, which the Tribune identified as “a gentleman and a scholar from old Kentucky” and a “sage of Churchill Downs,” argued that the switch would be good for the Derby. He opposed some pundits’ beliefs that the Derby would suffer, citing the Derby’s status as one of the world’s greatest races.

“If any race is hurt as a result of the switch in dates, it will be the Preakness,” he said to the Tribune in 1932.

The Enquirer agreed, saying a week before or after the Preakness would not “wreck it or mar it.”

“After all, one cannot get it out of his system that Maryland, just like New York, is so insanely jealous of the success of the Kentucky Derby that either would do anything to mar the Kentucky race,” the Enquirer wrote. “It is a fine old time to be letting petty jealousy rear its head.”

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One Brooklyn Daily News commentator found the new order — running the medium-distance Derby ahead of the shorter Preakness and then longer Belmont — to be intriguing, claiming it would add “zest to the campaign.”

Burgoo King won both the Derby and Preakness in 1932, and the following year, the Derby announced its 1933 start date as the first Saturday in May.

The Derby's 1933 start date ran in newspapers with little ado.

“Matt Daiger, secretary of the Maryland Jockey Club, had no comment to make when informed that the value of the Derby would not be slashed,” the Baltimore Sun reported in Dec. 1932.

For the next eight decades, the Derby has never faltered as the Triple Crown opener. That could change this year, but it's unlikely that Sanders — the Kentuckian who raved about the Derby — would have been deflated by today's news.

“Nothing can hurt the Kentucky Derby,” he told the Tribune in 1932. “It has grown into an institution.”

Hayes Gardner can be reached at hgardner@gannett.com; Twitter: @HayesGardner; Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: courier-journal.com/subscribe.