I’m a horse racing fan. Used to ride before I got old and fat.
Justified won the Kentucky Derby Saturday. My pick finished 19th. So it goes . . .
Justified was the favorite and he broke a curse that’s lasted 137 years. That was the last time a horse had won the Kentucky Derby without running as a 2-year-old. Apollo’s Curse is broken. Apollo was the last horse to win without running a race as a 2-year-old.
I don’t follow horse racing year-round, but before the derby I do some research on the horses in the race and their road to get there. The derby sets off a six-week binge where I absorb all I can to get up to speed on the horses and everything horse racing. It obviously doesn’t pay off.
I enjoy it, but my research isn’t very fruitful. The only winner I ever picked was American Pharoah, and I think everyone picked him. He was a great horse.
Every year I also revisit some of what I consider horse racing’s memorable moments. There have been a few horses that have won all three of the biggest races in the world, known as the Triple Crown.
These three races are only for 3-year-old horses. It’s kind of like an all-star series for second-year players. Pick a sport. Any sport. Only these athletes have four legs.
Most horses start racing when they are two, and hit their prime at age three — thus the Triple Crown.
There have been 12 Triple Crown winners. Lots of years a horse has won two of the three races, but only 12 times in 100-plus years has one horse won all three.
The three races, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes, were inaugurated in different years. The first horse to win all three races was Sir Barton in 1919, but the term “Triple Crown” didn’t come into common use until after 1930, when Gallant Fox won all three.
The most recent Triple Crown winner was American Pharoah, who accomplished the feat in 2015. American Pharoah became the first horse to win all three races in 37 years. This was the longest period between Triple Crown winners. Some believed there would never be another Triple Crown winner, since some owners choose to skip the middle race to rest their horse for the Belmont Stakes. That gives them a distinct advantage.
The owner of California Chrome criticized this practice when his horse was beaten in the Belmont after winning the first two legs in 2014. Just a year later American Pharoah proved the theory wrong when he won all three.
The last horse before American Pharoah to pull off the Triple Crown was Affirmed, in 1978. Seattle Slew did it the year before. That was the only time in history it happened in back-to-back years.
Perhaps the greatest race horse ever, Secretariat, did it in 1973. He broke a drought of 25 years. Before Secretariat the last horse to win all three races was Citation in 1948.
Prior to Citation, Assault won in 1946, Count Fleet in 1943, Whirlaway in 1941, War Admiral in 1937, Omaha in 1935, Gallant Fox in 1930, and Sir Barton in 1919.
Ironically, two of the best known race horses didn’t win the Triple Crown.
Man o’ War, in my opinion the only challenger to Secretariat for the title of greatest of all time, won two of the three races, but wasn’t even entered in the Kentucky Derby.
Seabiscuit, whose notoriety was revived by a book and a movie, didn’t even qualify for the Triple Crown races. In fact, he didn’t win in his first 17 races, but became a horse of mythical proportions later in life.
He even beat Triple Crown winner War Admiral (son of Man o’ War) in a match race. After that Seabiscuit may have won every race he ran if it hadn’t been for the practice of making him carry additional weight to “handicap” him.
Today all horses are required to carry the same amount of weight in order to be on equal terms.
I call Secretariat the greatest horse ever because he not only won the Triple Crown, but set track records in all three races. And here’s the impressive part, 45 years later all three of those records still stand. His performance in the Belmont Stakes was the best race any horse has ever run. He won by 31 lengths and carved 2.6 seconds off the record. Since then no horse has been close to his time.
If American Pharoah had been in the same race back in 1973, he would have been a distant second. In horse racing records are broken by fifths of a second, not by 2.6 seconds. If you haven’t seen that race, watch it on YouTube. It’s pretty impressive.
Can’t beat summertime and the Kentucky Derby
STEVE CHRISTENSEN