It's still two weeks away, but I'm starting to get excited about the thought of Big Brown winning the Triple Crown if he can capture the Belmont Stakes.
The last time it happened was exactly 30 years ago when Affirmed won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont. Back then, winning the Triple Crown didn't seem all that difficult as it happened three times in the decade: 1978, 1977 with Seattle Slew and, of course, 1973 when Secretariat won the Belmont by an astonishing 31 lengths -- footage we're sure to see a few dozen times as the race on June 7 approaches.
I'm a horse racing guy. I went to the track as a little kid with my grandparents in Queens, N.Y., and amused myself by looking for winning tickets thrown on the ground. Never happened, but it was still a grand day.
Much later in life, I got a job as an editor at the Racing Times, where my colleagues and I would write and edit copy based on the horses running at the local Southern California track at the time of year (Santa Anita, Hollywood Park or Del Mar) or the big races around the country.
We would handicap races and debate the merits of some of the best horses as they would race against each other. The paper eventually got sold and we all had to find new work, but it was one of the best jobs I ever had.
Anyway, thoroughbred races has taken some hard knocks the past few years -- lower attendance, less interest among the casual sports fan, losing gambling dollars to the casinos, the deaths of Barbaro and, most recently, Eight Belles — but it's still a great game.
For nothing more than to give the sport a lift, I'm hoping Big Brown gets to the winner's circle at Belmont safe, sound and then runs for years to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment