By 2015, in the years since Affirmed added the Belmont Stakes (G1) to his earlier victories in the Kentucky Derby (G1) and Preakness Stakes (G1) back in 1978, an even dozen horses had gone postward in the 1 ½- mile race at Belmont Park with the chance to become racing’s next Triple Crown hero, only to come back empty-handed.
All of them were sent off the as a heavy favorite – eight of them odds-on – beginning the very next year with Spectacular Bid, who was third at 1-5, two years later with Pleasant Colony (sixth at 4-5) and on through Alysheba and Sunday Silence, who were fourth and second, respectively, at 4-5 in 1987 and 1989.
The following two decades brought back-to-back-to-back Triple Crown heartbreaks, with Silver Charm, Real Quiet and Charismatic failing to successfully navigate the gantlet of those three races from 1997-99, and War Emblem and Funny Cide following in their hoofprints in 2002 and 2003.
Most memorably, perhaps, was 2004, when 2-5 Smarty Jones fell victim to the late-running Birdstone in the shadow of the wire, effectively silencing the stretch-long roar of a record 120,139 fans who had come to see history being made.
In a sense, it was, as number of years between Triple Crown winners had stretched to 26, one more than the then-record span between Citation in 1948 and Secretariat in 1973.
The drought continued. Previously undefeated Big Brown got pulled up in 2008. Fan favorite California Chrome, who’d won six straight stakes, finished fourth in 2014 as the lone member of the field to have completed in all three races.
At that point in time, the 2-year-old American Pharoah had yet to step onto a racetrack.
When he did, as the 7-5 favorite in a 6 ½-furlong event on August 9 at Del Mar, it was not the kind of debut his connections – owner Ahmed Zayat and Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert – were hoping for. Jumpy in the post parade, twitchy in the gate, the colt rushed up three-wide to duel with the front-running Om through an opening quarter of 22.48 seconds, then began dropping back and finished 9 ¼ lengths behind the pacesetter.
Jockey Martin Garcia was speedily dispatched in favor of Victor Espinoza, who later guided the son of Pioneerof the Nile to a 4 ¾-length win in the Del Mar Futurity (G1) a month later (the only race of his career in which he was not the favorite).
Equally facile wins followed in the Frontrunner Stakes (G1) at Santa Anita, the Rebel Stakes (G2) and the Arkansas Derby (G1) at Oaklawn Park, capped by a hard-fought and well-earned one-length victory in the Kentucky Derby.
Two weeks later, over a sloppy Pimlico strip, with lightning flashing and thunder rumbling, American Pharoah splashed home to a seven-length victory in the Preakness and headed to New York, according to public sentiment, as the second coming of Secretariat. Or Seattle Slew. Or, heck, even Citation.
Handicappers of the professional variety were (and are) quick to look for an angle – any angle – to beat the obvious favorite. Back then, in six of the previous 12 years, horses who were beaten in the Derby and skipped the Preakness wound up winning the Belmont. In 2015, there were five such horses Frosted, Materiality, Mubtaahij, Frammento, and Keen Ice. Moreover, you had to go back to 2005 to find a Preakness runner who won the Belmont in Afleet Alex.
Being the superior animal he was, however, American Pharoah, at odds of 3-4, turned in a race of biblical proportions as he swept to a 5 ½-length victory that had had fans hugging total strangers, weeping, throwing their hats in the air as if, as Time Magazine put it, they had just graduated from the Triple Crown College of Sadness, and generally behaving in the giddy sort of manner the likes of which we have not seen for some years.
And what of those who bet on the favorite?
As of 2025, of the 94,128 $2 win tickets on American Pharoah, 90,237 – or nearly 96% – remain uncashed.
