A Triple Crown Winner

I had originally planned to continue sharing the adventures of my trip abroad, but decided that can wait.

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I love sports.  But sometimes more than the actually action of a game, I love the stories that are told through sport.  I love the history and tradition as well as the transparency it provides and the camaraderie it brings to a community.  I’ll always believe that sports are more than just a game. 

This weekend the sports world witnessed something that hasn’t happened in 37 years.  American Pharoah won the Triple Crown.  If you follow horse racing at all you know that many people have questioned whether this would ever be done again.  Thirteen horses in the past 37 years have won both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness before falling short during the mile and a half Belmont Stakes. But not American Pharoah.  He is the 12^th horse in history to accomplish this feat of winning all three of the Triple Crown races in just 5 weeks- each race being a different length and on different tracks.

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I’m a big fan of horseracing and the thing about this accomplishment is that it’s not just for a particular team or city.  Every year we have a Super Bowl Champion, Stanley Cup Champion, World Series Champion, NBA Finals Champion, etc.  And though we continuously have winners of prestigious races in horse racing, we haven’t seen a horse with such greatness in a long time.  I absolutely love the amount of support and fans that come out of the woodworks to root for a Triple Crown contender.  In the sport of horseracing, I really encourage it.  NBC showed clips of the many different celebrities, shows, etc that were sending their support to American Pharoah.  Even opposing trainer Todd Pletcher said prior to the race, that he wouldn’t be upset if his horse lost to American Pharoah.  The industry was extremely hungry for this.  A Triple Crown win is something that all fans root for and it restores faith in the horse racing industry.  It proves it can be done.  That a horse can still accomplish the recently unthinkable- running a mile and a half race with both speed and stamina.  Maybe ear plugs or a shorter tail are the secret?

American Pharoah has seemed to run these races with ease.  He ran a beautiful race from start to finish.  He was in the lead the entire time and started to break away on the final turn before really getting ahead half way down the stretch and finishing 5 and a half lengths ahead of Frosted and the others to follow.  (Not sure if  you noticed this but Materiality was 2^nd/right behind American Pharoah up until the final stretch and finished dead last- perfect example of the stamina most horses lack.) Jockey, Victor Espinoza did a wonderful job on not letting American Pharoah break too soon, not that it would have mattered because American Pharoah seemed to race to the finish with ease.  Espinoza even had time to look back at the others just like Ronnie Turcotte did on Secretariat.  The race was so much fun to watch.  I literally got chills as I watched him cross the finish line.  It was a remarkable 2 minutes.  The best two minutes in sports. 

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Congratulations to American Pharoah, Victor Espinoza, Bob Baffert, Zayat Stables and everyone else for their monumental victory.  I can’t wait to see American Pharoah run in the Breeder’s Cup for a hopeful Grand Slam!