This picture of Secretariat now seems like it epitomizes not only his superiority over his competition, but also the amount of time that has lapsed between Triple Crown winners. In the initial disappointment over Big Brown's defeat yesterday, I fear it may also be a metaphor for how long a wait it may be before we see another one.
Maybe we were spoiled that not only Secretariat, but Affirmed and Seattle Slew, all were Triple Crown winners from the 70's. We also saw quality horses in the "hidden Triple Crown" winners. Sham finished second to Secretariat in all three legs of the Triple Crown and Alydar managed to challenge Affirmed and finish second in all three races as well. In another year, perhaps we'd also be talking about those two horses.
In hindsight, it's obviously a greater challenge to win all three legs than the number of winners from each era would have you believe. A horse has to almost win the equivalent of a sprint, a middle distance race and a distance race in five weeks. He also has to stay healthy and injury-free in order to train for the disparate courses while competitor barns can sit back and train challengers who are geared to each individual race distance. They can virtually tag-team the Triple Crown challenger, while that horse has to run, ready or not.
Imagine a track star trying to win the 100 meter dash, the 880 meters, and the mile in five weeks. Perhaps not an equivalent analogy, but it's the best I can come up with. Or a Triple Crown winner in baseball. There's a reason why we haven't seen one of those in a long time as well.
It did appear yesterday as if the grind, or maybe the injury, or getting jostled in traffic, finally caught up to Big Red. He didn't seem to want to run when his jockey asked, for whatever reason. He fought him a bit for the first time.
Unfortunately, you can't ask the horse "WTF happened?". Also, unfortunate that prior to the race you couldn't get the trainer Dutrow to STFU. Maybe I'm old school, but I got a sick feeling whenever this gas bag "guaranteed" victory. It's one thing to have confidence in your undefeated horse. It's another thing to seemingly rub your opponents face in it.
The other "Oh No!!" moment was when the ABC commentator mentioned during the post parade that Big Red seemed so cool that he hadn't even broken a sweat. It was 90+ heat combined with near 90 humidity, your gas bag trainer looked like someone turned a fire-hose on him he was sweating so much and the horse that needed to be ready to go hadn't broken a sweat? Maybe I don't know enough about getting race horses warmed up, but that seemed to be a red-flag that the horse was not ready to run.
Know I know how the old Brooklyn Dodger fans and Chicago Cubs fans feel.
"Wait 'til next year."
No comments:
Post a Comment