Just nine days from what promises to be a vintage edition of the Belmont Stakes, here’s a slightly different look at the emotions in evidence during that famed 2015 running, when American Pharoah clinched the Triple Crown.
This excerpt is taken from Patrick Lawrence Gilligan’s acclaimed book ‘Around Kentucky with the Bug’, his account of a year spent travelling around the Bluegrass state with his son when the then 18-year-old was trying to make his way as an apprentice jockey. Jack Gilligan, now an established and successful rider, is currently recuperating from injury on doctor’s advice.
Click here for details of how to obtain a copy of the book.
I was at Indiana Grand Racing and Casino on Saturday, June 6, 2015. The day of the 147th running of the Belmont Stakes. The day American Pharoah was to face his greatest test.
The mile-and-a half route, over the large Belmont Park oval, is an extreme distance on dirt, and there was little guarantee on pedigree that the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner could last out the extra two furlongs. Further than he had ever run before. Further than any of them had ever run before. For the eight runners due to go to post shortly before 7pm New York time, this was going to be the most exhausting day of their lives.
I have spent a lot of time at Indiana Grand. Jack rides there often during the summer. It is a long drive there, and, when you arrive, it is uninspiring, strictly business, more about the casino than the racing. Hardly anyone watches the racing, except on Saturdays, when they race in the evening. Then people come and eat barbecue and drink beer and bet the ponies.
This Saturday, though, you couldn’t move. All of Indiana was there. They were there to watch the Belmont Stakes.
About an hour before the big race, I went down into the casino; it was humming, but I was able to grab a lone stool at the sports bar. From there, I could watch the boy race and also watch Belmont Park.
The sky was blue in New York, and due to crowd concerns, for the first time, the venue had limited itself to 90,000 tickets sold. They were all taken before the day of the event.
I had seen the crowd before for the Belmont. I had seen them before with a Triple Crown contender. Crazy crowds, loud, boisterous, drunk, hollering and shouting. Wild. And I had seen the disappointment before, when the wrong horse won, when the Triple Crown went unclaimed for another year. It had been unclaimed for 37 years now.
I got talking to the guy next to me at the bar, the way you do. I asked him what he liked for the big one, what he thought about American Pharoah.
“That horse won’t stay!” he exclaimed aggressively. “I’ve taken the field against him, exactas, trifectas, superfectas. That horse won’t win today!”
Tall pile of tickets
I looked down in front of him; there was a tall pile of tickets next to his beer. I didn’t say anything. The man seemed agitated, maybe he had staked too much, maybe he had drunk too much. Maybe both.
Except for the distance and the weather, the race was a rerun of the Preakness. American Pharoah slightly missed the break but had secured the lead by the first turn. Along the backstretch, I marvelled again at his stride, so powerful and fluent and long, and I knew then that a stride like that would break his competitors before it faltered itself.
He turned into the long Belmont homestretch on a tight rein still, and Frosted made an attempt to draw up to him, to challenge him, to make a race of it. There was no use, though. He was too good. He was born too good. And, as his rider shook the reins at him and sent him to the wire, he opened up and lengthened his stride, and he extended his lead, and the crowd was delirious, and the commentator was screaming and hoarse with excitement, and the bar erupted.
And, as he passed the wire, the first Triple Crown winner since 1978, the man next to me was crying “No! No! NO!” in despair.
There have been over 700,000 Thoroughbred colt foals born in North America since the crop in which Affirmed, the last Triple Crown winner, was born in 1975. He was ridden by a quiet, modest, charming kid from Kentucky. ‘The Kentucky Kid’. He was just 18 years old when he won the Triple Crown on Affirmed. The same age my son, also a jockey, was when American Pharoah won the Triple Crown.
But my son was riding lesser horses at Indiana that night. He is waiting for his shot, for his big horse still. But he is young. It isn’t often you get a shot to star as young as Steve Cauthen was all those years ago.
It was the rider who seemed born for greatness in the 1978 Triple Crown series. In the 2015 Triple Crown, it was the horse who was born for greatness.
American Pharoah has just been better than the 700,000 other colts that came along since Affirmed. There had been plans for all of them when they were born. Hopes. Dreams. Some were realized, to a lesser or greater extent. Many were disappointments, failures who could not live up to the dreams placed on them, unwittingly, unknowingly.
They tried but they could not succeed.
And how many people were born in that time, how many dreams did they have, how many succeeded, and how many failed? What of my friend at the bar? What dreams had his parents had for him when he was born, what aspirations were there?
The rarity of greatness
Or were there none? Was he cursed from birth? Did no one love him properly, or care for him deeply, or dream for him greatly? Was he destined to be miserable, to hope for failure in others? Or had he tried? Had he tried like American Pharoah’s opponents, but was found wanting? Did he find that he just couldn’t fulfill his dreams in any measure? That he didn’t have what it took, that he just couldn’t make it?
Greatness strikes rarely. It is not failure to not win. Gallant Frosted in second was not a failure. The 17 talented horses and riders strung out behind the great one in the Kentucky Derby were not failures. They were not failures because they were still trying, still fighting, still in the game, playing the game. Making the game.
But people shouldn’t bet against the great ones, equine or human. The great ones may lose battles here and there, but, in the end, eventually, they tend to win the wars. That is why most people cheer for them, and love them, and applaud them. Like I did.
And it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up as he crossed the line, because finally, American Pharoah, after all those years, after all that waiting. He really was The One.