They don’t make racehorses the way they did in the 1970s.
That fact of thoroughbred life was driven home again Saturday when Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner War Emblem’s campaign for the Triple Crown came to a disappointing conclusion with an eighth-place finish in the Belmont.
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Sixteen horses failed to complete their Triple Crown quests with a victory in the Belmont, and eight of these failed missions have come since Affirmed became the 11th and last Triple Crown winner in 1978.
The sport has changed dramatically since Affirmed and Alydar engaged in their Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont fights to the finish line.
At that time, 11 of the world’s richest and most prestigious races–the eight Breeders’ Cup championships, the Arlington Million, Japan Cup and Dubai World Cup–didn’t even exist. Off-track betting was limited to New York and Nevada, and casino gambling could be found only in Nevada.
Bidding wars
European billionaires and enormously wealthy Arabian sheiks and princes began engaging in bidding wars for the best-bred American yearlings during the 1980s, sending prices skyrocketing.
The buying frenzy reached unprecedented heights in 1985. The British Bloodstock Agency, on behalf of Robert Sangster and partners, paid $13.1 million for a colt.
Coinciding with the megabucks suddenly flooding the bank accounts of the leading breeders in Kentucky was the gradual erosion of thoroughbred talent. The best-bred young horses were leaving for Europe to race for Sangster and the sheiks and princes.
Triple Crown winners Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed are the best remembered of the great horses of the ’70s. But there were four more who most certainly can be classified as superstars by today’s standards–Ruffian, Forego, Alydar and Spectacular Bid.
Ruffian suffered her only loss and lost her life following her breakdown early in her 1975 Belmont Park match race with Foolish Pleasure. Until then she had led at every call in every one of her 10 races.
The gigantic Forego is one of America’s greatest geldings, a horse who won major races at distances ranging from 7 furlongs to 2 miles and in 1976 had 137 pounds on his back when he made a wide run from behind to win the 1 1/4-mile Marlboro Cup on a sloppy track.
Had it not been for Affirmed, Alydar would have been the last Triple Crown winner. He is the only horse to run second in all three Triple Crown races, and Affirmed’s aggregate margin of victory was less than 1 3/4 lengths.
After capturing the Kentucky Derby and Preakness in compelling style, Spectacular Bid stepped on a horse-blanket pin in his stall on the morning of the 1979 Belmont and came in third after holding a three-length lead with a quarter-mile to run. The colt came back to run in 13 races from coast to coast, losing only one, the 1979 Jockey Club Gold Cup in which he was second, three-quarters of a length behind Affirmed but in front of his Belmont conqueror Coastal.
As a 4-year-old in 1980, Spectacular Bid was 9-for-9. He carried 130 pounds or more in five of those races, and he set two track records at Santa Anita, one at Hollywood Park and another at Arlington Park.
Good, not great
In the 22 years since the retirement of Spectacular Bid, there have been some very good horses, most notably Sunday Silence, Cigar and Silver Charm.
But when their careers are stacked up against those of the magnificent seven of the ’70s–Secretariat, Forego, Ruffian, Seattle Slew, Affirmed, Alydar and Spectacular Bid–their stature shrivels.
War Emblem is a talented horse who is the standout of what looks like a poor 3-year-old crop. Yes, his chances in the Belmont took an irreparable hit when he stumbled coming out of the starting gate and for a time was trapped behind horses. But the early speed specialist was running in a 1 1/2-mile race, and a great horse would have surmounted that impediment, the way Seattle Slew did in the 1977 Kentucky Derby.
Seattle Slew hesitated leaving the gate, then swerved to the outside. By the time jockey Jean Cruguet straightened him out, he was pinned between Get the Axe on the outside and Bob’s Dusty on the inside. For the first 16th of the 1 1/4-mile race it seemed as though he would be trapped behind a wall of horses. But Seattle Slew wasn’t going to let that stop him. He bulled his way through, and by the time he’d run a quarter-mile he was challenging For the Moment for the lead, and he went on to hold off Run Dusty Run to win by 1 3/4 lengths.
If Seattle Slew could do it in a 15-horse Derby, War Emblem should have been able to do it in an 11-horse Belmont.
`Just the coach’
War Emblem’s trainer, Bob Baffert, put the colt’s Triple Crown quest in its fitting and proper context earlier last week when he said it wasn’t about himself, jockey Victor Espinoza or principal owner Prince Ahmed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. “It’s all about the horse,” Baffert insisted. “He’s the one who is doing it. Walk around downtown New York and ask about the Triple Crown winners and people will say `Secretariat’ or ‘Seattle Slew.’ If you ask those people who trained these horses or who rode them they wouldn’t know. I’m just the coach.”
But during the ’80s and ’90s and the first three years of the 2000s the Triple Crown horses’ feats don’t hold a candle to those of Baffert and two other “coaches,” D. Wayne Lukas and the late Woody Stephens.
From 1982-86, Stephens won five straight Belmonts.
From 1988-2000, Lukas won 13 Triple Crown races, and in 1995 he became the only trainer to sweep the series with two horses, winning the Kentucky Derby and Belmont with Thunder Gulch and the Preakness with Timber Country.
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Since 1997, Baffert has won eight Triple Crown races–the Derby and Preakness with Silver Charm, Real Quiet and War Emblem and last year’s Preakness and Belmont with Point Given.
A New York racing record crowd numbering 103,222 showed up Saturday to see if War Emblem could sweep the Triple Crown, breaking the record of 85,818 set in 1999 when Lukas’ horse Charismatic also met defeat in the Belmont after capturing the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness.
Until the next Triple Crown winner comes along, the unrelenting attempt by Baffert and Lukas to find that horse is by far the best thing that American racing has going for it.