One Down, Light Years to Go for Colt

I guess the most difficult feat in sports is hitting in 56 consecutive games. Only one man has done it. Or, it’s winning golf’s Grand Slam. Only one man has done that. Hitting 60 home runs has been done twice.

But you really have to put winning the Triple Crown in horse racing in there some place. In the 114 years of the Triple Crown--Saturday’s Kentucky Derby was the 116th, the Preakness will be 115 later this month and the Belmont will be 122 in June--only 11 horses have brought off the triple.

Man o’ War never did it. Native Dancer couldn’t bring it off. Twenty Grand faltered. It takes a very special animal to rack up those three grueling races in a little over a month.

Three-year-old horses are not supposed to be equal to this in the spring of the year. Horsemen even grumble about getting them ready for the grinding mile and a quarter of the Derby in May.

The Preakness is a sixteenth of a mile shorter and it’s more of an all-skate than a stretch run. The Belmont is an overland mile and a half but the reality of the situation is that there might be no true mile-and-a-half horse in the race. A sprinter is not supposed to win the Belmont--but one often has.

Some horsemen prefer to skip the earlier two races and save a true distance horse for the Belmont. But let me ask you, who’s the more famous race horse, Conquistador Cielo or Citation?

Stop the next 10 people you meet on the street and ask them who or what a Creme Fraiche is--and none of them will guess race horse. But if you asked the same 10 people who or what Sunday Silence is, they can probably tell you.

Creme Fraiche won the Belmont. Sunday Silence didn’t. But Sunday Silence won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.

The Belmont, in short, is not for everyone. It’s an acquired taste, like caviar or sour cream. The public is only interested in the Belmont if a horse has a chance to add it for a Triple Crown.

Sixty-five of the 114 times, we have had three different winners in a Triple Crown season. That’s more a tribute to how mediocre the horses were than how different the events--and the tracks--were.

Thirty-eight times we had a near miss--a season in which one horse won two legs of the Triple Crown but missed the third. In seven of those instances, a double crown winner skipped the Kentucky Derby but won the two others. Man o’ War was one of these. He skipped the Derby in 1920 but swept the Preakness and won the Belmont by 20 lengths in a two-horse race.

Horses do not ordinarily pass up the Derby to try--or win--the other two anymore. Pillory was the last to do it, in 1922.

Some horsemen with precociously swift horses aim for the Preakness with its emphasis on early agile speed, but it always seemed to be a melancholy option. It was distressing that Ack Ack, who had won the Derby Trial handily in 1969, never tried the Derby.

And then this year, Housebuster, probably the fastest horse on the American circuit, won the Trial and skipped the Derby. He might try the Preakness.

It might be a mistake. Swifties have made off with the Derby if the track is glib enough and the field indifferent. Even if it’s not. Swaps won in 1955 over the true distance horse, Nashua.

Some horses should have been Triple Crown winners. Certainly, Native Dancer was as valid a Triple Crown horse as ever filled a starting gate. He won the Preakness and the Belmont--but it’s interesting that he won the Belmont only by a neck over a fresh horse, Jamie K.

The Preakness can be a spoiler because of its speed bias. Eight times, this race has foiled a Triple Crown with the eventual winner of the two other races yielding to superior front-running.

But the Belmont has foiled a Triple Crown an unlucky 13 times, the last three in a row and five of the past six. It’s like a guy who steps on your joke or spills soup all over your new suit. A movie where the hero dies in the end. The Belmont has killed more good stories than an editor who’s just had a fight with his wife.

The Kentucky Derby has been the stumbling block six times. Bimelech probably should have won the 1940 Triple Crown but blew the Derby to Gallahadion.

Bill Shoemaker, who rode him, always said that Damascus should have won the Triple Crown in 1967 but for a bad Derby trip, which Shoe took the blame for. Other horsemen thought the horse went to the race a bit short on conditioning.

Little Current had Triple Crown written all over him in 1974 when he got caught in a 23-horse rodeo in the Derby--it was restricted to 20 after that year--and spent the race behind a wall of slower horses.

Which category will 1990’s Kentucky Derby winner fit? Is Unbridled Triple Crown quality?

His performance chart would cast doubt. The Derby was the second race he’s won this year. Did he catch an off track and an unwise pace on that off track? Did he just have to play a hand that was all aces?

You have to remember that one of the most brilliant Triple Crown winners of all time was Secretariat--he won the Belmont by 31, repeat, 31 lengths--and he went into the Derby with three seconds and a third (in the Wood Memorial, no less) on his record.

Will Derby winner Unbridled lead the ‘90s into a record number of Triple Crown winners? Not the way to bet. There was one before 1920--Sir Barton in 1919. There were none in the ‘20s, three in the ‘30s, four in the ‘40s, three in the ‘70s. And none since.

You want to wish Unbridled lots of luck. He’s going to need it.