Dreams of a triple crown set pulses racing on Stateside
Both Cavans were knocking high-profile opponents off their pedestals and both achievements were groundbreaking in their own way.
The four-legged Cavan, ridden by Pete Anderson, spoiled Tim Tam’s bid for US horseracing’s Triple Crown in 1958 to become the first of only two Irish-born thoroughbreds to win the Belmont.
As for the other larger group of transatlantic visitors to New York, they were upsetting the steady march of the Kingdom’s footballers, already a dominant force in football and going for two in a row that year. The Ulster upstarts clinched their third Sam Maguire and spoiled Kerry’s plans once again after having destroyed the original five-in-a-row bid in 1933 with (yes) a last-minute goal.
The Belmont Stakes, which runs Saturday, is the third of the three US flat racing classics raced by three-year-olds in the space of five early summer weeks, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes being the other two.
All three have their own traditions and glamour to attract the fair-weather fan but it is at Belmont’s storied oval mile-and-half of dirt where dreams of this annually sought-after treble are routinely dashed, usually by other fresher horses who may not have been subjected to testing themselves in Louisville or Baltimore or both.
During well over a century of the three races, just 30 horses have arrived in New York with Triple Crown hopes and only 11 of those have succeeded, the last being Affirmed in 1978. It happened three times in the 1970s — Secretariat and Seattle Slew also crushing the field — so it must have seemed like it would be a regular occurrence.
Instead, every year that passes makes it a holier and holier grail in US sport.
Just like at home, these fancy occasions horrify the purists while the rest of us huddle around a flat-screen TV somewhere, feigning expertise for a couple of exciting minutes, hoping to witness history.
This year, blind optimism is being loaded onto I’ll Have Another, an out-of-nowhere colt ridden by young jockey Mario Gutierrez who was largely unknown until he and his mount shocked the sport with a thrilling win over Bodemeister in Kentucky on May 5.
Two weeks later, the pair repeated the feat in an eerily similar manner, surging past an unlucky Bodemeister a few yards from the line in the Preakness to win by a neck.
Bodemeister’s trainer Bob Baffert had enough of the heartbreak at that stage and the decision was quickly taken to rule out any chance of a round three in Belmont Park.
Adding to the drama is the fact that it has been four years since there has been a Triple Crown attempt of any sort. With expectations as high as usual in 2008, poor ill-fated Big Brown was eased up at the top of the stretch causing a massive anti-climax.
The omens haven’t been good for I’ll Have Another either. The success he has brought to his low key stable in California has been tainted by trainer Doug O’Neill falling foul of performance-enhancing regulations. He is due to serve a 45-day suspension after the race on Saturday for the possible “milkshaking” of another of his horses, Argenta.
It’s a charge that O’Neill consistently denied throughout a two-year legal battle, the upshot of which is that while California racing officials have acknowledged that he himself did not administer a mixture of bicarbonate of soda, sugar and electrolytes to chase away fatigue, he was still at fault because ultimately the horse was under his care.
In the 34 years since Affirmed added a blanket of white carnations to the blanket of roses and blanket of black-eyed susans awarded for the Derby and Preakness respectively, 11 horses have failed to do what I’ll Have Another is aiming to achieve.
And if we don’t get to see it this year, the narrative will quickly return to the same old worries about the sport’s future while past glories and quaint traditions serve as anchors in choppy waters.
Still though, it’s easily the highlight of a great sporting weekend for me even with Ireland playing on Sunday, while I’ll have no chance of watching any of the GAA in San Diego where I’ll be enjoying the start of a different sort of triple crown with three weddings over the next three Fridays.
All of them are safe bets for marital bliss and all are worthy of a shameless shout out: RJ and Tamara, Sandra and Jon back in New York and then home to Cork to be with Niall and Una. Good people and good times. We’ll all have another.
* john.w.riordan@gmail.com Twitter: JohnWRiordan
