2023 galloping Triple Crown thread

Maybe the most dominant performance by an athlete - human, equine or other - in history.

My old man was at Big Red's last race, at Woodbine here in Toronto. He said he had seen hundreds of races there, greats like Northern Dancer, but he said he had never seen anything like Secretariat coming off the far turn through the fog and rain. He knew one of the jockeys in the race and he said he looked to his right briefly as Secretariat came up alongside him and he said he moved like no other horse he'd ever seen.

It remained the only winning ticket he never cashed in his lifetime - my brother has it in a frame with a photo of the horse crossing the finish line. When the old man died my brother went to the track that day and bet every horse in the first race. He put the eventual winning ticket in the old man's jacket so he could leave a "winner".

And Bill Nack's story in SI after Big Red died is as good as anything SI has ever run.

Pure Heart

 

This is one of the few times I wish I still worked at the local paper. A hometown trainer who bases at Oaklawn got a horse into the Derby thanks to the suspension. It must be a great story - finding out on just days before you’re in the race, the mixed emotions of getting in that way, etc. But with a grand total of one (1) reporter at a paper for a 200k metro, I don’t think that’s happening.

 

Amen. The only SI story I cried more while reading was The Ripples From Little Lake Nellie.

It’s great that your dad never cashed that ticket.

 

"Local Man, Horse in Derby"

Update next week after they return.

 

This is what the ticket looked like:

 

At that point, what the hell would you win? Put in $10, get back $10.50?

 

After Affirmed won the Derby, I went to the Preakness with some friends; bet him with $50 to show, made a profit of $2.50. I hadn’t a clue what I was doing.

 

No, but a five percent return is considered OK in conventional finance. If you'd only have bet $5 billion, you'd have been sitting pretty.

 

@Huggy, you fucker. I cried through the story again.

 

Horses today aren't as good back when we were young. Which is odd when you think about it given the advances in technology and animal medicine. Let alone genetics.

 

The horses are bred to such a fine standard things like legs are overlooked. Dogs are similar. Incredibly inbred with hip or cancer problems.

 

Are any horses bred to race past the Triple Crown? If you are breeding an animal like that, you are getting screwed up animals.