We are three weeks away from the 137th Kentucky Derby and consequently embarking on another run for the Triple Crown. I often get asked the question of why has it been so long since there has been a Triple Crown winner. Thirty-two springs have come and gone since Affirmed accomplished the feat. There have been many near misses but none to ascend to the status of legends. There have been many great three year old racehorses in this time period, Big Brown, Smarty Jones, and Alysheba just to mention a few, but none could do it.
Could it be that it's just that hard? We ask a three year old racehorse, and folks that's a young thoroughbred, to run a distance, one mile and a quarter, a distance that none of them have ever gone before. We ask them to walk over before a crowd of somewhere near two hundred thousand, a multitude of which they have never seen or probably will never see again. Run the one and a quarter distance against competition of the best three year old racehorses on the planet, and win! Great right? Now lets take them two weeks later on a plane or a van to Baltimore, and pretty much do the same thing again except this time they are going to have to run a shorter distance of one mile and three-sixteenths, with tighter turns that requires more speed, and win! No problem?
Three weeks later let's go to New York ask them to run a mile and a half, a distance that none of them have ever run and will probably never run again, and all the while fresh horses that haven't been on the Triple Crown trail with you, having every intention of ambushing your dream. If this special horse manages to overcome this and win, well then his name gets spoken in reverence, because that's why we haven't had a Triple Crown winner in a generation, it's that hard to do.
Eleven horses have won the Triple Crown and one day another will come and when he does, know what trouble he had along the way to greatness.
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