American Pharoah wins the triple crown! It’s the first time a horse has won the triple crown in 37 years!
This is the third largest margin of victory by a triple crown winner. Only Secretariat ran the Belmont Stakes faster. It’s American Pharoah’s eighth career start.
This is jockey Victor Espinoza’s third attempt at the triple crown. This is trainer Bob Baffert’s, fourth attempt at a triple crown.
In the final and longest race of the triple crown, The Belmont Stakes, Victor urged the horse, which didn’t have a great start out of the gate, to the front and stayed there for the duration of the one-and-a-half-mile trip. American Pharoah is the second wire-to-wire winner in the last 30 years at the Belmont Stakes.
Victor turned 37 this week and is now the oldest jockey to win the triple crown. Bob Baffert is the second oldest trainer to win the triple crown at age 62.
The owners, Zayat Racing, didn’t notice, until the registration was completed, that he horse’s name was misspelled. American Pharoah is the twelfth triple crown winner in history. American Pharoah’s tail was bitten off by a stable-mate, so he has a noticeably stubby tail, full, but short.
One of the stupidest looking things though was a reporter on a horse interviewing the jockey. It just looked tacky. Initially there seemed to be a cameraman on a horse giving awful shots, but it may have been a camera attached to her helmet. They dumped that camera’s shots eventually.
The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes are the race which make up the triple crown.