June 6, 2015
Victor Espinoza knew that it was an odd stop on his itinerary, this visit to the grave site in Queens of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the rebbe of the Lubavitcher group of Hasidic Jews. Since Schneerson died in 1994, Jews from all over the world have made a pilgrimage to Montefiore Cemetery to pay homage to the charismatic rebbe, considered one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the twentieth century. Espinoza, of course, was not Jewish but considered himself spiritual. He prayed several times a day as well as meditated. Espinoza had scheduled the stop after receiving a blessing from a rabbi before the Preakness.
It was Thursday, the Belmont was two days away, and Espinoza was feeding off the energy of the grave site as people from all over the world, many of them clad all in black in the attire of the sect, wrote notes on small pieces of paper and tossed them onto the rebbe’s grave, asking him to deliver the messages to God.
“I was just curious,” he said. “To me, life is all about learning.”
The New York Post had already welcomed Espinoza to town in distinctive tabloid fashion, attempting to stir up some controversy with photos of the five-foot-two-inch jockey alongside “good-luck charm, leggy nineteen-year-old equestrian beauty Kelly Kovalchick,” a five-foot-seven blonde he had allegedly been seeing since the previous year, unbeknownst to his longtime girlfriend and now fiancée Stephanie Kunkel. He took the gossip good-naturedly, laughing it off as the tabloid having some fun.
Espinoza wrote a prayer in Spanish and lit a candle before ripping the paper into pieces and tossing it on the grave site. He read King David’s Book of Psalms. He walked backward out of respect when he left the grave site. He even bought the book Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History at the visitors’ center. He swore that he was not a superstitious guy.
“So whatever happens, if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” he said. “If not, then I move on like last year. We have a value system in our life, and that is a priority in our family: God comes first, family, country, and all the others—all the others, you can put horse racing in them.”
Lessons and understanding that divine intervention is a hope, not a horse had come naturally to Espinoza. In two days, he would become the first jockey in history to have three chances at winning the Triple Crown. He was devastated after War Emblem but accepting that he was on a tired California Chrome the previous year, and now he was eager and happy to have another opportunity. The ripped up prayer that he left for the rebbe was not to win the Belmont aboard American Pharoah.
“I prayed for health and safety for all of us,” he said, another smile creasing his face. “It’s more important than a horse race.”
Espinoza had one more stop before he returned to his hotel. He wanted to see Anna’s House, the day-care center for the children of backstretch workers at Belmont Park. Ahmed Zayat had just donated $100,000 to the facility, which was the only one of its kind on an American racetrack. Many of the fifty-plus children being cared for were from Mexico and had parents who, like him, had come to America for the promise of a better life. They had nothing else—no friends or family or the ability to speak the language of what would become their new country. When Espinoza first arrived in America as a teenager, he had lived in a tack room and shared a communal bathroom at Bay Meadows and Golden Gate Park in Northern California.
His post-Preakness comment about being the “luckiest Mexican on earth” was not meant to be flippant. He had once been like the children at Anna House, happily at play, unaware how hard their parents worked to make a meager living. Espinoza knew they would probably have to grow up too fast like he did and find work to help their families. He knew that he was fortunate to find the path that led to a job he had learned to love and was well compensated for and that gave him the fortitude to overcome his circumstances, his limitations, and his fears.
As Espinoza painted and colored with the children, exchanging bursts of Spanish that often ended in laughter, he wanted to believe—he had to—that some would find their own path to a happy, successful life in whatever they chose. Either way, Espinoza was having a good day. The kids were fun. They were interesting. They said what they felt.
Conspiracy theorists, soothsayers, and experts of all stripes feel truly at home in few places. The racetrack is one of these premier locales. The times when this assemblage of dreamers balances anxiety and gloom, hope and despair with the fervor of true believers are rarer still. The eve of a Triple Crown bid is such a time.
It was a wonderful day at the racetrack on the eve of the Belmont Stakes, as theories and opinions about the prospect of American Pharoah’s winning the 147th running of the Belmont Stakes and sweeping Thoroughbred racing’s Holy Grail were lobbed and volleyed with enthusiasm. They started in the morning on the backside, drifted onto the rail by early afternoon, and worked their way up to the third-floor clubhouse bar and finally to the press box.
People agreed on only two things: One, it had been far too long to have not minted another Triple Crown champion, and two, some of the arguments would be validated by 7:00 p.m. or so on Saturday after American Pharoah ran the Belmont’s mile-and-a-half route and either passed or failed the Test of the Champion.
Those who believed American Pharoah would succeed leaned on the fact that he was the two-year-old champion last year, meaning he was stamped as the best of his generation. They also were buoyed that Baffert had been in this situation on three previous occasions, and Espinoza had twice before—just last year. The feeling was that they had learned a great deal from those experiences, from the best way to condition a horse for the grueling three-race, five-week schedule to when exactly in the race to move him on this distinct mile-and-a-half oval with its sweeping turns and sandy surface.
No one argued how great American Pharoah looked since arriving here on Tuesday. He was a ripped and muscled bay cannonball that looked at home on Big Sandy, as the Belmont surface is known, as soon he stepped on it. All the heavy lifting was done, but when Jorge Alvarez galloped him on Thursday morning, American Pharoah floated around the racetrack like an old soul. He was even better on Friday morning. The Daily Racing Form’s Mike Welsch perhaps summed up the case for American Pharoah strongly and succinctly in his final Clockers’ Report on the Belmont field.
“The most talented horse in the field also is training the best coming into the race,” he wrote. “There are not enough superlatives to describe his awesome work at Churchill Downs on Monday, when he cruised an absolutely effortless five furlongs in 1:00.08 before galloping out like a monster, six furlongs in 1:12.82, seven-eighths in 1:25.94, and a mile in 1:39.59. He was just as sharp and eager to train during his first two training sessions at Belmont and seemed to have adapted well to his surroundings. Considering the way he’s thrived since the Preakness, if there’s ever going to be a Triple Crown winner in our lifetime, he sure seems like the one.”
The doubters of American Pharoah—and there were plenty—argued that in a deep crop of promising three-year-olds, it was too early to proclaim him the best. He was all-out to win the Derby by a length; he benefited from a sudden drenching of Pimlico, which gave him his preferred running surface in the Preakness; and he lacked the pedigree to go this long distance. They conceded that Baffert and Espinoza are seasoned but wonder how much either had learned. For the fourth time, Baffert trained his Triple Crown contender at Churchill Downs in Kentucky rather than getting him acclimated here. Why wouldn’t Espinoza come here a couple of weeks early to pick up some mounts and increase his knowledge of the local track?
Andrew Beyer, the longtime horse racing columnist for the Washington Post and the creator of the Beyer Speed Figures, was perhaps the most forceful detractor. He noted that the average price of the Belmont winner since 2000 was 17-to-1 and that the pedigree of American Pharoah suggested that the colt would be staggering down the stretch. No American horses were bred to run a demanding mile and a half on the dirt, and with a female bloodline dominated by sprinters with minimal stamina, American Pharoah was less so. Beyer argued that the colt’s Derby and Preakness looked better visually than it did on the stopwatch and his figures.
“It may have appeared that he was finishing strongly in these two victories, but he wasn’t,” he wrote. “He ran the final quarter-mile of the Derby in a slow 26.57 seconds, and the final fraction of the muddy Preakness in the equivalent of 27.62 for a quarter-mile—hardly an indication that he wants to go a longer distance.”
Finally, there were a couple of other fresh and accomplished horses among the seven Belmont challengers, namely the Florida Derby winner Materiality and the Wood Memorial champion Frosted. Both overcame terrible trips to finish strong in Kentucky—Materiality sixth, Frosted fourth. Both were based here and were impressive-looking specimens. Both have classic distance pedigrees that scream they will still be running that last quarter of a mile.
So, who was going to win? The three hardest things to predict the outcome of are a ballgame, a love affair, and a horse race. Some horse and rider were going to get lucky; another couple were going to taste misfortune. Someone would be right; most would be wrong.
Either way, this was an exciting weekend to be at Belmont Park. There was no way Frances Relihan was going to miss seeing American Pharoah achieve what she had long ago predicted for him. The morning following the Derby, she told her husband, Joe, that she was buying their Belmont tickets that morning and would book flights as well. Relihan was that certain American Pharoah was going to win the Preakness easily and bring her to New York for a date with destiny.
She had watched the second leg of the Triple Crown in the Bluegrass at a party at Chanteclair Farm alongside her childhood friend Pat Hayes. They had grown up riding ponies together in Listowel, and Hayes now managed Chanteclair, one of its owners being John Moores, the former owner of the San Diego Padres baseball team. She was on her toes clapping at the television as American Pharoah rolled to victory on the sloppy track, validating her confidence in the colt. As Relihan boarded the train to Belmont at Penn Station Saturday morning, she grabbed her husband’s hand and assured him that this was going to be a day to remember.
On the backside of Belmont Park, Ahmed Zayat and his family and friends had circled their wagons—or at least four RVs—behind barn 8. About 10:00 a.m., Zayat led his family in the Sabbath Prayer and reminded them that they had much to be grateful for. In the previous forty-eight hours, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that the statute of limitations had run out on Howard Rubinsky’s breach of contract lawsuit and dismissed it. Zayat had been comforted when the daughter of Affirmed’s owner, Louis Wolfson, had reached out to Joanne Zayat and told her to ignore the unfavorable stories that had been written about her husband. Her father had served nine months in federal prison for conspiracy and illegal stock sales, an episode revisited often through Affirmed’s Triple Crown. It had been upsetting, but she told Joanne Zayat not to let the attention ruin the experience. They needed to enjoy the moment.
It had rained in the early morning hours at Belmont Park, and now the track was drying out, which could mean trouble if it became deep out and tiring as the day went on. It was something else to worry about beyond Zayat’s control, so he banished it from his thoughts. He watched as his family and friends dove into the whitefish and bagels and lox and spoke enthusiastically about a day that could very well be one to remember. Zayat was proud of himself. He had been in the horse business only since 2006, and here he was on the precipice of a Triple Crown. He had lost a fortune in the game and was in the process of trying to make some of it back. He had been tortured by close finishes in the Derby, but here he had a colt that he had born and bred—“Zayat blood from A to Z”—trying to do something special. Mostly, Zayat understood that he had been blessed with American Pharoah. There were so many things that had gone right. The injury to the suspensory tendon could have been career-ending. The bruise to the foot in February could have been worse and meant missed training.
Instead, American Pharoah was getting stronger, faster, and smarter here in New York while the thirteen horses that had tried and failed to win the Triple Crown prior to his colt arrived here tired, beat up, and ultimately defeated by what it took to get here.
Across the parking lot, inside that grand old racetrack on Long Island, the anticipation of something perhaps extraordinary occurring built throughout the day. The New York Racing Association, which operated Belmont, had capped attendance at 90,000 in the hopes of avoiding the overcrowding that had marred the previous year’s race. A crowd of 102,199 came to see California Chrome’s attempt and by the time the race went off at 6:51 p.m., concession stands were out of water, beer, hot dogs, and everything else, and people were hot and cranky from an afternoon spent pushing through crowds. It got worse when thousands of people had problems leaving Belmont Park by the Long Island Railroad and were stranded there for hours.
The cap had been effective at thinning out the crowd, and sunny skies and breezy 76-degree weather had lulled Belmont Park into its usual big day rhythm. It was a day for pastel sports coats and form-fitting dresses and porkpie hats along with wide-brimmed ones made from lace. Mostly it was an afternoon dedicated to the finest racing in America as seven stakes races, five of them Grade 1s, worth a combined $5.9 million, led into the $1.5 million 147th running of the Belmont Stakes. Every twenty-eight minutes, what already was a steady roar became a crescendo of hopes and passion as the horses pounded down the stretch toward the wire with track announcer Larry Collmus laying down the narration as bettors sang their own choruses in seeming harmony.
“Get there wire!”
“Come on 7!”
“Hold on, Javier!”
“Yes, yes, yyyyyyes!”
Then, suddenly, the racetrack apron emptied as winners skipped to the windows to collect and losers headed back to seats and Daily Racing Forms to get it all back in the next race.
In the press box—where many of the same cast of characters had gathered on previous June Saturdays like this one, only to be disappointed again—a search was on that spoke volumes about the expectations set for American Pharoah. Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated asked if there was a journalist in attendance and was working when Affirmed won horse racing’s last Triple Crown thirty-seven years ago. Layden had been covering the horses, among other things, for three decades and worked off a list of contemporaries. It took longer than expected before he came across Jerry Izenberg, eighty-four years old, who still wrote columns on occasion for Newark’s Star-Ledger.
“I was here for Affirmed,” Izenberg said. “Secretariat and Seattle Slew, too.”
Down the hall in a glass-enclosed booth, Larry Collmus was preparing for what might become a historic race call. This was his fifth year calling all three legs of the Triple Crown for NBC, but his first as the track announcer for New York Racing. He replaced Tom Durkin, who had retired after twenty-five years of being the signature voice of horse racing. His baritone was mellifluous and his word pictures were often poetry. Durkin, however, was 0 for 7 when it came to Triple Crown bids—and 0 for 8 if I’ll Have Another’s scratch is counted. He was in this crow’s nest for all three of Baffert’s failed attempts. The defeat that stung Durkin the most came in 2004 when Smarty Jones was caught at the wire by Birdstone. The colt had pulled into New York undefeated, and Durkin wanted to be prepared for a transcendent performance. So he took a surveyor’s tape out to the track and measured 31 lengths—Secretariat’s record-setting margin of victory in 1973—and made a mark on the rail so that if Smarty Jones turned in a record-setting performance, he could say so. New York Racing officials subsequently put a pole at that location to honor Big Red. It was Durkin’s call, however, that lives as a memorial to the heartbreak of near greatness.
“And Smarty Jones enters the stretch to the roar of a hundred and twenty thousand!” he intoned. “But Birdstone is going to make him earn it today! The whip is out on Smarty Jones! It’s been twenty-six years—it’s just one furlong away!” Then, a second later: “They’re coming down to the finish! Can Smarty Jones hold on? Here comes Birdstone!”
When Birdstone passed Smarty Jones in the last 70 yards, Durkin, along with most everyone else at Belmont, was crushed. When California Chrome came up short the previous year, a frustrated Durkin tossed his headset in the booth. It was a hole in a Hall of Fame resume that would never be filled.
Now here Collmus, forty-eight and having honed his craft over thirty years at racetracks from Alabama to Massachusetts and Florida to California, had an opportunity to crown a champion less than six months into his new job. He had a couple of possible phrases ready if the feat occurred, but he did not want to be overly scripted. Collmus spent much of the day praying for clouds to roll in, because as dusk settles on sunny days at Belmont Park, the horses are completely backlit as they turn for home. On sunny days, the silks, which Collmus relied on to identify the horses, turn black, shadows set in, and he cannot see for certain who’s who until mid-stretch.
With ninety minutes before post time, there was not a cloud in the sky.
In the Baffert barn, things were getting busy as well as strange. In the week before the race, the Zayats, Baffert, and Espinoza all entertained deal offers from sponsors eager to have their products linked with what was hopefully the twelfth Triple Crown Champion. The winners were Monster Energy drink; Wheels Up, a luxury jet share company; and Burger King. Wearing a logoed ball cap, as Zayat and Espinoza did for Wheels Up, was one thing, but letting the fetching Monster Girls lead American Pharoah into the saddling paddock was quite another. The Monster people had hoped to put its logo on American Pharoah’s bridle, reins, or shadow roll. That was a non-starter as Baffert, ever superstitious, worried the slightest alteration to the colt’s routine would change his luck. With sponsors, media members, and fans milling around, Baffert rubbed Smokey’s head for luck as he did before all big races and headed to the racetrack.
In the jockeys’ room, Espinoza was running on the treadmill. He had gone to bed early the night before and slept in until 10:30 a.m. He was also relaxed enough to catch a mid-afternoon nap. Espinoza had had two mounts earlier in the card, including a third-place finish aboard Sky Kingdom in the Brooklyn Handicap; that was an important race because it was the exact mile-and-a-half distance of the Belmont. This was the only mile-and-a-half oval in America and was a tough track to navigate for visiting jockeys. The turns were long—1,000 yards versus Churchill’s 770 yards. They were so sweeping that Espinoza often felt that he was not on a turn at all. Belmont Park rewarded the patient and precise rider who could fight the impulse to hurtle his horse into the turn or even turn him loose on the top of it. Instead, more often than not, a winning ride was launched coming out of the turn and into its never-ending stretch. Much had been made of Espinoza’s poor record here. He had won only four races in seventy-nine mounts, and the rides he was most remembered for here were War Emblem and California Chrome’s failed bids. However, Espinoza knew that he had never been here with a horse like American Pharoah and was confident he was about to make a lasting memory.
Jimmy Barnes led American Pharoah into the paddock at Belmont Park while thousands of people lined up ten deep to get a look at the colt. The Monster Girls, indeed, were in tow and dressed almost demurely in black. Baffert made the walk from his barn to the paddock with his family. He had Bode by the hand, and Taylor, Canyon, Forest, and his daughter Savannah trailed behind them. In 1998, he had held four-year-old Savannah in his arms as they watched Real Quiet stagger down the stretch to get caught by a nostril by Victory Gallop. This was the first time ever that Baffert had all of his children at a Triple Crown race, which meant more to him now than whatever happened. Everything felt just right. Baffert knew he was having a good day when he passed a group of Jamaican horseplayers he recognized from his three previous bids. Instead of heckling Baffert as they had in the past, telling him that they were going to bet against his horse, they offered encouragement: “It’s your day, mon.”
Earlier in the day, he had spoken with Penny Chenery, who bred and owned Secretariat. It was her horse that set the modern standard for greatness in a racehorse on June 9, 1973, when he won the Belmont by thirty-one lengths, breaking the margin-of-victory record set by Triple Crown winner Count Fleet in 1943. He also ran the fastest mile and a half on dirt in history, at 2:24. Secretariat broke the stakes record by more than 2 seconds, and his time works out to a speed of 37.5 mph for his entire performance.
“Secretariat is widening now! He is moving like a tremendous machine!” is how CBS television announcer Chic Anderson described the colt’s stretch run.
Now ninety-three, Chenery had been coming to this race for thirty-seven years, waiting for one more horse and its owner to join this small and select fraternity. None had done so.
Zayat, surrounded by his family and friends, stood near the statue of Secretariat in the center of the paddock, trying to contain himself. He could not. His colt was the 3-to-5 favorite to win the race on the tote board and was 1-to-9 in his, and most people’s, hearts. He turned to Joanne.
“Are you ready to become the owner of the twelfth Triple Crown champion?” he asked her.
Espinoza emerged from the jockeys’ room with his six rivals and friends—all wearing polished boots, white pants, and Day-Glo silks and caps. Gary Stevens, Kent Desormeaux, and Mike Smith were colleagues from California and each was in the Hall of Fame. John Velazquez was as well but was based in New York, as were Irad Ortiz, Joel Rosario, and Javier Castellano. They stopped beneath a tree and arranged themselves around some wrought-iron chairs for the traditional photo portrait of the Belmont jockeys. When they were finished, Espinoza accepted the murmurs of “good luck” from them with a nod and went to find Baffert.
Espinoza thought the trainer was calmer than he had been in Louisville and Maryland. He was confident, too.
“Dude, he is ready. Go ahead and ride him with confidence,” Baffert told Espinoza. “That’s the only way, ride him with extreme confidence, put him on the lead. Go for it. If he doesn’t make it, don’t worry about it; we tried.”
Barnes grabbed Espinoza’s leg and vaulted him atop American Pharoah and off they went to the racetrack, escorted by a convoy of television cameras and still photographers. Espinoza heard the song “New York, New York” and the voices of 90,000 people singing along with Frank Sinatra before they made it to the breezeway.
And find I’m A number one…
Top of the list…
King of the hill…
A number one!
Espinoza allowed it to wash over him as he paraded American Pharoah past the grandstand. It was electric. He gave his colt a nudge and American Pharoah bowed his neck, pricked his ears, and galloped into the backstretch.
In a box on the second-floor clubhouse, the Bafferts took their seats with Jill and Bode flanking Bob, and Forest, Canyon, and Savannah a row behind them. They were joined by the costumed, plastic-headed “Burger King.” The fast-food company had paid Baffert $200,000 for their character to stay close enough to be in camera shots—money the trainer had pledged to four horse charities, including Old Friends and the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund.
Nearby, the Zayats were on their feet in a knot, with Justin behind with both hands on his father’s shoulders.
As Espinoza and American Pharoah shuffled into the Number 5 post, Collmus asked the question that everyone was awaiting the answer to.
“Is today the day? Is he the one?”
They would have the answer in less than two and a half minutes.
Suddenly, the bell rang and the gates swung open, but it startled American Pharoah and he snapped back on his heels. Just as quickly, Espinoza felt the colt uncoil and spring forward and within two jumps, they had catapulted ahead of his seven rivals and glided into the first turn like a marble circling a roulette wheel. Espinoza knew the race was over then. Beneath him was a horse that he barely recognized, one with a new depth of power. American Pharoah was hitting the ground as if he were walking on clouds. He was stretching as supplely as a yogi.
Behind him, Velazquez on Materiality sensed Espinoza was sitting on a ton of horse. He was just cruising along, running unhurried quarter miles at 24-second clips. He was on a fresh horse; now he needed to find out how fast Materiality was. He asked his colt to start chasing American Pharoah down the backstretch. Espinoza let Materiality get within a head but smooched in his colt’s ear and shook him off at the mile mark.
“Steady, steady,” he whispered to American Pharoah.
Mubtaahij, from Dubai, took a run at him on the far turn but got within only three lengths before peeling back. Revving up outside him, however, was the late-running Frosted. American Pharoah was pulling on him, wanting to go. Espinoza gave him a little rein but slowly reeled him back in. He didn’t want to choke him down. Frosted’s jockey, Joel Rosario, scrubbed the gray colt’s neck and got within four, three, and two and a half lengths.
As American Pharoah came out of the far turn and squared his shoulders, Espinoza stared down the long withering stretch of Belmont Park as a sense of inevitability surged through its mammoth old grandstand. It was go time, and the crowd strained on the tips of their toes and let out a roar from deep in their souls. It was going to end, finally, please—this thirty-seven-year search for a great racehorse. This battered old sport needed another immortal Thoroughbred, one worthy to stand alongside Sir Barton and Gallant Fox, Omaha and War Admiral, Whirlaway and Count Fleet, Assault and Citation, Secretariat, Seattle Slew, and Affirmed. In the time it took to find a twelfth Triple Crown champion, America had elected five presidents, fought three wars, and lived through at least three economic downturns.
As American Pharoah bounded into the stretch amid a deafening roar, the memories of the gritty Affirmed, the speedy Seattle Slew, and that tremendous machine Secretariat were summoned from backside to grandstand, and rightfully so. No one doubted that American Pharoah was about to enter the history books. He was bouncing down the lane as if jumping from one trampoline to another, and no one was going to catch him.
Baffert was transported. He had come here before, certain that he had a horse that belonged among the giants of racing, only to feel his heart ascend to his throat. That was not going to happen here today, though. He had watched Secretariat win the Belmont with his father on a little television set with rabbit ears in a VFW lodge in Arizona. God, he wished the Chief and his mom, Ellie, were here to see this. The crowd was thundering and Baffert was a fan again, not a Hall of Fame trainer.
In the saddle, Espinoza felt a rush that had twice eluded him. He dropped the reins on his colt and let the muscled bay take him home. When he was a boy in his native Mexico, Espinoza had been afraid of horses, but now more than ever he felt the gift they had given him. Beneath him, American Pharoah’s strides were getting longer and longer, but Espinoza felt as if he were riding the colt in slow motion.
Far behind him, Stevens, Velazquez, Ortiz—every rider except Rosario aboard Frosted—had their heads tilted to the infield, watching the stretch run on the giant screen there. Stevens felt the tears stinging his eyes as they gathered in his goggles. Espinoza hit American Pharoah with his right hand once, twice—more like taps than thumps—three, four, and five and snapped off to a four-length lead. At the sixteenth pole, Collmus had seen enough and let loose the phrase that had been tumbling in his mind for days: “The thirty-seven-year wait is over. American Pharoah is finally the one.”
When Espinoza crossed the finish line five and a half lengths ahead, he finally allowed a smile to curl at the corner of his mouth and the raucous celebration to reverberate deep in his bones. Flowers cascaded down from the upper tiers of the clubhouse and tears spilled along with beers as strangers fell into each other’s arms, ecstatic.
“Holy shit!” Espinoza said after powering the colt down on the first turn and being gathered up by an outrider. “Wow. Wow. He’s just an amazing horse.”
He turned and galloped American Pharoah the length of the grandstand and let a thunderstruck crowd cheer the sublime performance of a once-in-a-lifetime athlete. Espinoza could barely catch his breath.
In the clubhouse, Jill Baffert swung her arms around her husband and buried her wet cheeks into Bob’s chest. He could not talk as other trainers pushed through the crowd to congratulate him.
“That horse is too good,” said Todd Pletcher, the trainer of Materiality.
Kiaran McLaughlin, the trainer of Frosted, shook his hand.
Ahmed Zayat was a puddle by the time he got his trainer in a bear hug.
In the breezeway near the winner’s circle, Frances Relihan had goose bumps listening to the thunderous ovation the colt was getting, a colt she knew as a weanling in the quiet of the Bluegrass. Jimmy Barnes was stoic, holding a tearful Dana, until he saw Espinoza returning American Pharoah from his victory lap. He ran onto the track, grabbed hold of the colt, and burst into tears.
“We all wanted it,” Zayat said when they finally converged in the winner’s circle. “We wanted it for the sport.”