(Yes, there seemed to be a precious-metals theme to the race.)
But wait a minute! Here comes Touch Gold. That was the amount given to the top overall performer in the three Triple Crown races, based on a point system of 5 for a win, 3 for second and 1 for third.Ī hundred yards from the wire, it seems Silver Charm is certain of victory. Alysheba may never have caught the runaway winner, but his fourth-place finish, only a neck out of second, cost his owners $1 million. Whatever the answer, jockey Chris McCarron waited too long to urge the horse to make a move and then was briefly boxed in when his mount kicked for home. At the time, New York racing laws prohibited the drug, and it will forever be debated whether this kept Alysheba from a better showing in the Belmont. In the earlier two races, Alysheba benefited from the use of Lasix, an antibleeding medication widely thought to aid performance. But this time around there was nothing neck and neck about it, with Bet Twice an easy winner. Odds: 4-5 Belmont finish: fourth, 14 ¼ lengths back Career starts: 26 (11 wins, 8 seconds, 2 thirds)Īlysheba narrowly beat his rival Bet Twice in the Derby and the Preakness. “Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong,” his trainer said. Pleasant Colony eventually got back in the race but flattened out at the finish. Then he settled into last place as others traded the lead. However mediocre the competition, Pleasant Colony got in trouble quicker than you could say, “And they’re off.” The horse, apparently spooked by a nearby photographer, shied at the gate, delaying the start. This was not so much a vote of confidence for his colt as a lack of respect for the 10 other horses in the field. Pleasant Colony was nowhere near as classy as Spectacular Bid, but this horse, too, had a cocky trainer, John Campo, who predicted an easy win.
Odds: 4-5 Belmont finish: third, one and a half lengths back Career starts: 14 (6 wins, 3 seconds, 1 third) Many questioned the alibi: If the horse was hurt, how was he out in front one and a quarter miles into the race? Delp himself offered an alternative excuse, saying the colt’s teenage jockey, Ron Franklin, hit the gas too soon in the stretch. For the third-place-finish, Delp blamed a safety pin that supposedly jabbed Spectacular Bid’s right front hoof as the colt walked about his stall in the morning. “Only an act of God can keep us from winning the Triple Crown,” said the horse’s trainer, Bud Delp. Spectacular Bid was indeed a spectacular horse, outrunning the field in 12 consecutive stakes races on the way to the Belmont. Odds: 3-10 Belmont finish: third, three and a quarter lengths back Career starts: 30 (26 wins, 2 seconds, 1 third)Ī victory by Spectacular Bid, after Seattle Slew’s in 1977 and Affirmed’s, would have made it three Triple Crowns in a row, something like a hat trick in triplicate. Like California Chrome, each horse went to the post an overwhelming favorite. The difficulty of the colt’s task is evident by the long skein of woe in the 12 most recent failures, a dozen sad tales that include a possibly phantom safety pin, a stumble out of the gate and jockeys whose usually sound judgment took a mystifying holiday. Will California Chrome, the 13th with a chance to match Affirmed’s feat, be the lucky one? Twelve horses have come oh-so-close, finishing first in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes before failing to capture the grueling mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes. When a chestnut colt named Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978, he was the third horse to do so in six years, and it seemed that achieving the holy grail of horse racing was no longer so arduous a quest.īut since then, the crown has gone unclaimed, tantalizingly so, with one supposed shoo-in after another failing to complete the sweep.
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