Triple Crown is a rare feat

The Triple Crown series is one of the most exciting and highly anticipated succession of events on the horse racing slate each and every year. These classic horse races that feature the cream of the crop of the three-year-old racehorses in any given year capture the imagination of serious fans of horse racing, but the renewal of the quest for the Triple Crown also draws in casual fans of the sport. Even people who watch just three races a year will invariably tune in to the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.

When you ask yourself why there has not been a Triple Crown winner since Affirmed, who accomplished the feat back in 1978, the first answer that come to mind is recovery time. These races take place when the horses are still quite young and developing, and running these distances takes a lot out of them. When a horse puts in an all out effort to conquer a huge field in the Kentucky Derby, and is then expected to repeat with just two weeks rest in the Preakness, it is being asked to do a lot. If he (or she) is fortunate (and talented) enough to pull it off, he then has to be able to come right back and win a mile and a half marathon, the Belmont Stakes. These horses are being asked to recover from their previous races very quickly during the Triple Crown series, and that recovery is very difficult to achieve.

Winning the Triple Crown is a difficult feat, and it may be the single greatest achievement in all of sport. It takes supreme talent, it takes stamina, it takes resiliency, and it takes a lot of luck because some things are out of the horse’s control, like traffic and poor handling, and some are out of the jockey’s control, like weather or a rank horse who won’t relax. The odds are always going to be against it, but who knows, perhaps this will be the year when the hex is finally vanquished and the Triple Crown is worn once again.