The past four days in the sports world were very busy.
Statements were made, narratives were altered and legacies were forever changed.
It started on Thursday night with superstar winger Alex Ovechkin of the
Washington Capitals finally hoisting the Stanley Cup in his 13th
season. It continued on Friday with the Golden State Warriors winning their
third NBA championship in the past four years. Over the weekend in Paris, the
top-ranked women’s tennis player, Romania’s Simona Halep won her first grand
slam. The top-ranked men’s tennis player, Rafael Nadal, claimed his 11th
French Open and 17th grand slam title. Lastly, at Belmont Park
yesterday, Justify became the second horse in four years to win horse racing’s Triple Crown.
The last five weeks on the calendar are the pinnacle for
horse racing. For 37 years, the aura of the Triple Crown loomed over the sport.
In 2015, American Pharoah, trained by Hall of Famer Bob Baffert, finally ended
the drought. It was going to happen eventually and it was going to happen
again. But, the likelihood of the same man being behind both? That’s a whole
new level of improbable. Baffert trained Justify to all three victories
becoming just the second trainer to boast multiple Triple Crown winners on his
resume. The other one? Jim Fitzsimmons who won his second Triple Crown back in
1935.
Saturday marked the 150th running of the Belmont
Stakes. Justify was the 13th Triple Crown winner. In addition to the
37-year drought that American Pharoah ended, 25 years elapsed in between
Citation’s Triple Crown in 1948 and Secretariat winning all three jewels in
1973. Though, when it has happened, it’s usually part of a decade of a golden
era in the sport. In the 1930s, three horses won the Triple Crown. In the
1940s, four horses won the Triple Crown. In the 1970s, three more horses won
the Triple Crown. And now, two horses have accomplished the sport’s greatest
feat in the current decade.
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| Garry Jones/Associated Press Justify became the second undefeated horse to win the Triple Crown. |
Are we in the midst of another golden era in horse racing?
If so, it’s all thanks to Baffert. Of the 13 Triple Crown winners, Justify
defeated the largest field in the Belmont Stakes. Both American Pharoah and
Justify won the final race of the three in wire-to-wire fashion. For what it’s
worth, American Pharoah went on to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic in the fall of
2015, doing so by six and a half lengths, the largest winning margin in the
event. Most expect Justify to return to Churchill Downs on the first weekend in
November for the same race. Rather than arguing that Justify’s victory
yesterday diminished the ability for younger fans to understand how difficult
it is to win the Triple Crown, maybe just acknowledge how special these two
horses were.
Baffert’s list of accomplishments goes well beyond the
American classics, as he has several Breeders’ cup wins, International stakes
and graded stakes victories under his belt too. It’s not worth analyzing the
fields of some of those other races and trying to make sense of how impressive
those victories are. It would take a real horse racing expert to do that and it’s
really not even necessary. These are the five weeks of the year that horse
racing is most visible. Announcers Tom Durkin and Larry Collmus have done a
remarkable join accentuating the excitement of this time of year for the sport.
For those that weren’t around in 1978 for Affirmed, the Triple Crown and its
mystique were an annual draw. There were several horses that got close and made
Belmont Park on the second Saturday in June the place to be. Then it happened,
and now it’s happened again, all because of one legendary trainer. That should
be all we need to know about the legacy of Bob Baffert.
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