DAWN BROKE OVER Belmont Park on Saturday, June 10, as serenely as it did any other perfect spring morning on western Long Island. Affirmed and Alydar were resting peacefully in the stalls they had come to call home, going through their normal routines as if this were any other race day. Laz Barrera and John Veitch had gotten to their respective barns before 6 A.M. as usual, going through their own regular race-day routines and settling in for the twelve-hour wait until the call to post for the featured eighth race. Only this time, the wait would seem more interminable and the sense of urgency more palpable than ever—especially for Barrera as he anxiously prepared to send Affirmed into battle for the final jewel of the Triple Crown.
From the moment the gates opened at 8:30 A.M., there was already a buzz of excitement building in anticipation of the 110th running of the Belmont Stakes. By the first race at 1:30 P.M., with the sun straight up in the blue sky and temperatures rising into the seventies, the largest racetrack grandstand in America was filling up with eager fans. By mid-afternoon, 65,417 of them had passed through the turnstiles, making this one of the biggest crowds in Belmont history. By late afternoon, the anticipation was crackling like electricity through the grandstand and clubhouse.
Expecting a jam-packed stadium, Belmont Park officials opted for the first time to open all 512 mutuel windows to accommodate the flocks of bettors who would wager more than $1.2 million on the featured race—the vast majority of it, predictably, riding on either Affirmed or Alydar. Another $1.3 million would be wagered at Off-Track Betting parlors by New Yorkers who’d watch the race on TV like millions of others across America. The bettors at Belmont ultimately would send Affirmed to the post as the odds-on favorite at 3-to-5, with Alydar the solid second choice at even money.
The objects of all the betting and bustle had spent the long day separated by three-quarters of a mile—Affirmed at Barrera’s Barn 47 on the hill all the way on the easternmost tip of the sprawling grounds, Alydar at the circular Calumet barn down near the horse tunnel leading to the paddock behind the ivy-covered clubhouse—before they would come together for what promised to be a mile-and-a-half duel to the finish.
The call to the paddock finally came at 5 P.M. Patrice and Lou stood on the grass in front of the saddling stalls and looked back at the crowd overflowing the paddock stands that surround the walking ring. Thousands of fans jostled each other, straining to get a peek at the two chestnuts as they finished their journey down the path from the barns to the paddock.
The crowd let out whoops of encouragement when they spotted Alydar being led in by Clyde Sparks. A banner, made up in the devil’s red and blue colors of Calumet, was raised. It read: ALYDAR, FORGET THE PAST. TODAY IS YOUR DAY.
Moments later, a burst of applause greeted Affirmed as Juan Alaniz led him into the paddock. The ovation followed Affirmed like a wave around the walking ring all the way to the saddling stalls. Patrice couldn’t help but remember that maiden race at Belmont a year earlier when Affirmed came prancing in, so beautiful, his mane blowing in the wind. Today, her heart was pounding and the colt was walking into the paddock so calm and poised. Patrice smiled when she saw Steve Cauthen making his way over to the stalls, the accompanying applause exceeding even the ovations accorded the two colts.
In Affirmed’s stall, Laz Barrera took a few seconds to give final instructions to his jockey. Send Affirmed up from the start and position him on the inside, the trainer said. And then, “Any time Alydar goes for the lead, you go right with him. You go with him wherever he wants to go.”
Over in Alydar’s stall, John Veitch was taking the opportunity to give Jorge Velasquez his final instructions. Stay closer and take the fight to him earlier, the trainer said.
“Riders up!” the paddock judge’s voice boomed.
Alaniz led Affirmed out for Cauthen to mount. Barrera gripped the jockey’s shin and hoisted him up into the saddle. Cauthen took a few seconds to undo the first few of Affirmed’s braids, so that he’d have some mane to grab on to when they bounded out of the starting gate. Patrice looked at the colt and his young rider, marveling at their composure, wondering how they and Lou could seem so calm while she and Laz felt like they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Veitch likewise popped his jockey up onto Alydar’s back. As the two colts then made their way around the walking ring, the crowd gave them one last round of applause to send them off from the paddock. From inside the racetrack, the familiar staccato of the bugler playing the Call to Post could be heard. As if on cue, Affirmed and Alydar were joined by the other three colts as they marched through the tunnel that would take them under the grandstand to the track.
As the five horses spilled onto Belmont’s homestretch and into the sunshine, the band struck up the opening chords of “The Sidewalks of New York.” Cauthen was happy to be greeted by the same pony and pony boy that had met them before. Trying to make it seem like just another race, the jockey chatted up the pony boy as usual. Then Cauthen said he wanted to limber Affirmed up, and they took off at a slow gallop. Meanwhile, Alydar, without a pony as usual, seemed strong and ready as Velasquez galloped him toward the starting gate.
As the colts loaded, Alydar once again balked at entering his stall, so full of himself that he had to be pushed into the gate. Once Alydar had settled into the Number 2 post right outside of Darby Creek Road, Affirmed quietly slipped into the Number 3 stall and then then waited patiently as Judge Advocate and Noon Time Spender were loaded. Before the bell could shatter the silence, Judge Advocate broke through the gate. The false start only heightened the tension. As soon as Judge Advocate was reloaded into Number 4, they were ready again.
It was exactly 5:43 P.M., but nobody in Belmont Park was looking at a clock or a watch.
THE CROWD TAKES a collective breath and stares at the starting gate in silent anticipation.
The bell clangs and Affirmed shoots to the front as expected. This time Alydar also breaks sharply, his head at Affirmed’s left shoulder, while Judge Advocate settles in on Affirmed’s right flank. Coming into the first turn, Affirmed has the lead by half a length, with Judge Advocate on the outside in second. Alydar is on the rail in third, with Noon Time Spender in fourth.
Cauthen looks back and can see the devil’s red silks on his left skimming along the rail. He drifts over a little to the outside, hoping that this will relax his horse and, maybe, tempt Velasquez to move up on the inside. Cauthen knows that Alydar doesn’t like to be on the rail. Besides, if Alydar moves up on the inside, he could get trapped behind the leaders, who are bunched tightly together.
Velasquez guesses what Cauthen is up to and refuses to take the bait. He pulls his horse off the rail and swings around to the outside of Affirmed and Judge Advocate.
As they move into the turn, Affirmed is going along easily in a hand ride. The pace is leisurely and the time is slow. Judge Advocate tucks into second by a head. Velasquez knows that the only way he can win this race is to join the battle early. He moves alongside the leaders and then starts to move past Judge Advocate. Affirmed’s right ear swivels back toward his rival.
The first quarter has been a slow 25 seconds. Velasquez is annoyed at the sluggish pace. “C’mon, Stevie, how can you go slow there?” he thinks. “Let’s put the pressure on. This is a mile and a half. Let’s see who’s who in America.”
They move to the backstretch and Affirmed is out in front by a length. He’s gone through the opening half mile in a plodding 50 seconds, a time slower than all but three leaders in the race’s 110-year history. Velasquez decides it’s time to start pushing Affirmed. He doesn’t want Cauthen saving his mount’s strength for the homestretch.
Cauthen hears a roar building from the distant crowd and knows that Alydar is moving up. Within a few strides, Alydar cruises alongside Affirmed. With nearly a full mile still to run, the battle has been joined.
“Now we’ve got a speed duel beginning to develop,” the track announcer, Chic Anderson, excitedly yells into his microphone.
Cauthen looks over at Velasquez and Alydar. He knows Affirmed can relax even with another horse right next to him, pushing. He thinks, “OK, let’s look at each other for a while. I’m not going to let you push me too much. I’m not ready to go yet.”
Velasquez sees that his plan hasn’t worked. But he’s fine with where he is for now. “We’ll just sit alongside him and give him some competition, and make him run for his money,” he thinks.
With seven-eighths of a mile to go, Affirmed and Alydar are now running as a team. They are just heads apart as they glide down the backstretch, having opened six lengths on Noon Time Spender and Judge Advocate, with Darby Creek Road still trailing in last place.
The crowd is standing on tiptoes, straining to see which colt is in front and screaming for their favorite to win. In the Wolfsons’ box, Patrice tries to watch the race through her binoculars, but she can’t hold them still enough because her hands are trembling so violently. She can barely breathe.
As Affirmed and Alydar cruise down the backstretch, the pace is speeding up but still on the slow side. Three quarters have gone by in 1:14. “Go ahead if you want to, buddy,” Cauthen thinks as he looks over at Velasquez. But Alydar doesn’t speed up. “Fine, we can play cat and mouse if you like,” Cauthen says to himself.
The two colts move as one into the far turn, with Affirmed just a head in front. Alydar challenges again on the outside, but Affirmed fights back and maintains his slight lead. Now Alydar’s nose is at Affirmed’s ears. They pick up the pace as they power through the turn, covering the fourth quarter in a mere 232/5 seconds and the next one in 241/5 for a mile and a quarter in 2:013/5.
At the head of the stretch, Affirmed and Alydar pour it on, leaving the rest of the field far behind. Affirmed still is leading by a head, but Cauthen senses that his mount is tiring. He knows Affirmed will not give up, but he’s not as sure that the colt will be able to keep his head in front. “It’s all or nothing today,” Cauthen says to himself.
Velasquez asks for more and Alydar surges, pushing his head in front.
“I got him this time,” Velasquez tells himself.
Up in the grandstand, Veitch can tell that Alydar is in front of Affirmed for the first time all year and hisses a barely audible “Got ’im!”
Chic Anderson is now screaming his calls: “The two are heads apart. And Alydar’s got a lead! Alydar put a head in front right in the middle of the stretch!”
Fans are now standing on their seats, jumping up and down. The grandstand is swaying as if it’s been rocked by an earthquake. Patrice can barely keep her balance with the shaking of the stands. Barrera’s wife, Carmen, looks over and sees that with every passing second her husband’s fingers are gripping his binoculars tighter. She’s worried about his heart. Lou, alone, has an air of calmness as he stares through his binoculars and watches his colt in the toughest battle of his life.
“It’s Alydar, and Affirmed battling back along the inside!” Anderson is telling the crowd. “We’ll test these two to the wire!”
The two colts fly down the homestretch, each struggling to take the lead. With an eighth of a mile to go, Affirmed once again pokes his head past Alydar’s.
The crescendoing roar of the crowd is so loud that no one can even hear the announcer’s calls.
At the sixteenth pole, Velasquez moves his colt to the left and crowds Affirmed. The jockey is thinking that if he comes close enough, he can force Cauthen to pass his whip from his right hand to his left: there’s a chance that Affirmed’s rider will bobble the switch and drop his whip.
But Cauthen passes the whip smoothly, and as he starts to slap his horse on the left hip, he tells himself, “It’s now or never.” Cauthen knows there’s a chance that Affirmed’s surprise at being hit on the left side for the first time will spur him to give just a little more.
Affirmed surges forward, pushing his nose in front. Cauthen keeps urging him with the left-handed whip while Velasquez whales away on Alydar’s right side.
Alydar desperately challenges again, but Affirmed stubbornly digs in and refuses to let him pass. They sprint nearly dead even through the frantic final strides, straining and driving, their heads bobbing in unison all the way to the finish line.
As they cross under the wire, it’s too close for the frenzied crowd to tell who has won the race as the PHOTO FINISH sign flashes.
But Cauthen knows. He stands in his stirrups and raises his left arm, whip still clutched in his fingers, in triumph. A few strides past the finish line, he looks up at the crowd and waves in exultation.
Whether it was the surprise of the hit on his left side or just pure heart that drove Affirmed forward to victory, no one will ever know.
As the two jockeys begin to pull up their mounts, Velasquez yells over to Cauthen: “Stevie, congratulations.”
“Georgie, thank you,” Cauthen yells back. “It ain’t been easy.”
Velasquez reaches down and pets Alydar on the withers. “Champ, you gave it a good try,” he says to the colt. “You’re still my champ.”
Up in the grandstand, Patrice’s legs have become so wobbly from the excitement that she falls back into Lou’s arms. When she rights herself, she turns to Barrera and gives him a big hug. Like everyone else in Belmont Park, they hold their breath waiting for the finish line photo to be read. Finally, the PHOTO FINISH sign is replaced by Affirmed’s number 2. The crowd immediately roars in appreciation.
The picture of the photo finish makes it official and freezes the historic moment: Affirmed’s head reaching toward the wire and Alydar straining to catch up, his nose just past Affirmed’s throatlatch. Affirmed has won by a head—and a short head at that, just inches.
AS SOON AS everyone could catch their breath, the Wolfsons and Barreras, their hearts still racing and palms still sweaty, started making their way down to the winner’s circle to join Affirmed and Cauthen. As they walked through the bedlam, they hadn’t yet absorbed the magnitude of what Affirmed had just accomplished—winning the Triple Crown in the most thrilling way imaginable.
After Cauthen slowed his mount to a walk, he steered Affirmed toward the winner’s circle in Belmont’s infield. As Affirmed’s connections looked on, the traditional blanket of carnations was draped over the colt’s withers. A mob of photographers started snapping the obligatory win shots. As the minutes passed, the adrenaline rush from the race dissipated and Affirmed’s neck started to droop. Soon, his head was down by his knees. He was so tired and so spent, a warrior who had left everything he had to give on the track. Barrera saw it and said, “Enough. No more pictures.”
Barrera immediately sent Affirmed back toward the stable area with Alaniz, and everyone else made their way to the trophy presentation. As Governor Hugh Carey presented the August Belmont Memorial Cup to the Wolfsons, a jubilant Patrice hugged Cauthen, bussed Barrera on the cheek, and blew kisses to friends in the crowd.
By now, the significance of what their horse had just accomplished was starting to sink in. They had won not just the Belmont Stakes, but also the Triple Crown. Affirmed had become only the eleventh horse ever to sweep the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont. It had been by far the hardest-earned Triple Crown in history. After racing Alydar for four miles in three showdowns over five grueling weeks, Affirmed had won the Triple Crown by a combined total of less than two lengths—easily the smallest margin of any of the eleven champions to accomplish the feat. And he had capped it off by capturing the final jewel by just a head for a Belmont coronation that all ten of his predecessors had measured in lengths.
While the winners celebrated, John Veitch walked quietly back toward the Calumet barn. As he passed by the stands, he heard a voice call out, “Hey Veitch, you know what Alydar needs?”
The man, wielding a king-sized beer, was obviously drunk. Though Veitch would normally have just walked on without responding, he was so distracted by the emotions sparked by the race that, unthinking, he looked up and said, “What?”
“Laz Barrera!” the man shouted back with a smirk.
Veitch turned away shaking his head, wondering why on this day of all days he would have responded to a drunken fan.
As he made his way back to the stable area, his horse was in the test barn where blood and urine samples must be taken on the first three finishers after all races. Affirmed and Alydar were trudging, one behind the other, around the walking circle.
Meanwhile, Cauthen had made a beeline to the jockeys’ room to change silks and prepare for the next race. As he entered the room, the valets—most of them veteran racetrackers three times his age—began cheering and applauding, then stepped forward one by one to offer handshakes and backslaps.
Cauthen looked across the room, spotted Velasquez, and walked over to him. The two riders threw their arms around each other, no hint of expression crossing either Cauthen’s pink-cheeked baby face or Velasquez’s worldly and wispy-mustached Latin countenance. Cauthen spoke the only words that passed between them. “A helluva race,” he said. Velasquez nodded.
Then they watched a TV replay of the race, Cauthen in silence and Velasquez in animated Spanish repartee with Angel Cordero, who had finished third on Darby Creek Road thirteen lengths behind Affirmed and Alydar.
Afterward, the two rival riders walked to opposite sides of the jocks’ room, Cauthen followed by a horde of poised pens and microphones, Velasquez by himself. Cauthen reached for a Coke and, as he popped it open, said, “I can’t believe it. What can you say after winning a race like that?”
As the jockey changed from the flamingo pink silks of Harbor View to the green and gold ones he would wear in the ninth race, he fielded questions from the army of reporters. As always, his responses were terse, delivered with his usual subdued expression.
How does it feel to be the youngest jockey ever to win the Triple Crown?
“Feels very good.”
What about the duel at the finish?
“Oh, it was a real horse race, all right.”
Then he excused himself to get back to work.
As he rushed to the paddock for the ninth race, he spotted his father and veered toward him. Cauthen grabbed and hugged his father, his excitement finally bubbling over. “Dad,” he blurted, “we did it. We just won the Triple Crown. The whole Triple Crown!”
It was, for the kid, a rare public display of emotion, one that was short-lived because he needed to rush off to the next race. Riding a favorite named Thousand Nights in a claiming race, the jockey finished a well-beaten second to Romanticize, a horse owned by Harbor View and trained by Barrera. When a steward’s inquiry disqualified Romanticize, Cauthen was awarded his fourth win of the day.
A short time later, now dressed in a leisure suit, Cauthen stood in the stands of the now-empty racetrack, a Daily Racing Form tucked under his arm, answering more questions from reporters about the only race that mattered. “I wasn’t worried about any other horse in the race,” he said. “I knew Alydar would come up and we would fight it out. I didn’t think we’d have to fight it out for a mile, but with Affirmed and Alydar it always seems to turn out that they fight for every inch. He had the lead on us, briefly. Affirmed fought back, and I guess we got ahead of him about twenty yards from the wire.”
Standing next to the jockey, Barrera nodded. “Steve gave Affirmed a perfect ride,” the trainer said. “I think he deserve a kiss, so I give him one after the race.”
The race had gone exactly as Barrera had planned, from the way his jockey kept Alydar close to the way his colt dug in and fought for every inch of ground. “As long as my horse sees Alydar, he don’t let him get in front of him,” Barrera said. “He don’t let nobody get in front of him. It is very hard to pass Affirmed because he don’t like to let anything get ahead. In the stretch Affirmed put his head in front, and I guarantee you that if they run around again, another mile and a half, his head still be in front.”
But it was a hard-fought and nerve-racking duel, Barrera added, giving Alydar his due. “I’ll say this: Alydar is a great horse, too. He fights like a tiger. I think as long as I live, I never see two horses like these ones. Horses going head-and-head for so long, fighting it out to the wire. I suffered a lot through the last three-eighths of a mile. That last eighth of a mile was terrible and wonderful for me to have to watch.”
For Veitch, it was terrible and excruciating. Alydar had become the most infamous runner-up in all of sports. He had won the dubious distinction of being the only horse ever to finish second in all three Triple Crown races. If he had run the same three races without Affirmed, Alydar would have swept the series by a combined margin of 221/4 lengths—more than every other actual Triple Crown winner except Secretariat and Count Fleet.
“What can I say? The other horse is that much better,” Veitch said, holding his hands inches apart. “That’s all. But he keeps beating us. It was a helluva horse race and we got beat. I’m proud of my horse, and we’ll be back to try Affirmed again. We’ll get him sometime, somewhere.”
Even in this most crushing of defeats, Veitch remained a model of good sportsmanship, his dry sense of humor intact through it all. Back at the barn, leaning over a railing with the sun setting in the distance, the trainer was waxing philosophical. “If you don’t know how to lose, you’d better not play this game,” he said. “You lose many more than you win. You can’t be hysterical. I did the very best I could. And Alydar ran great. Maybe they should charge extra for the thrills. But if you don’t get used to accepting defeat, it will drive you crazy. I learned from my father that you should lose the same way you win. And I think you show more class in the way you act when you lose than when you win.”
He shrugged. “You live in hopes, you die in despair,” he mused. “That’s why I’m not much for carrying around disappointments. I’m just looking forward to tomorrow.”
With that, Veitch excused himself to a reporter, saying he had a pressing engagement with a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. But before he left to drown his sorrow at a cocktail party, he went over to Alydar’s stall, leaned forward, and whispered into the colt’s ear: “We’ll always be friends.”
NO SOONER HAD the sweat dried on the shiny coats of the two chestnuts than their Belmont duel was immortalized in ink as “The Greatest Horse Race Ever Run.” Typing away in the afterglow of the breathtaking battle, turf writers were proclaiming it the most dramatic and most sublime confrontation of two horses ever seen on a racetrack. If such heavily hyped sports events—from match races to Super Bowls to heavyweight title bouts—rarely ever live up to their ballyhooed buildups, this one had somehow managed to actually exceed expectations.
For all its wrenching drama, The Greatest Race Ever was merely the fitting climax of what had already been acknowledged as The Greatest Rivalry Ever. The race had simply taken the rivalry to another level. Affirmed’s Triple Crown triumph, Bill Nack would write, was “kind of a sidelight to the larger and more dramatic show—the greatest rivalry in racing history.” The rivalry, Bill Leggett declared in his Sports Illustrated race story, “transcends what is supposedly racing’s greatest show, the Triple Crown.” After all, the Triple Crown had now been won eleven times—thrice in the past six years alone and an unprecedented twice in successive springs—but this kind of rivalry and this kind of race come along maybe once in an eternity.
Affirmed and Alydar had outdone not only themselves but also all their forerunners. In the late-afternoon sun of June 10, their surpassing duel had turned everyone and everything into historical footnotes.
From the moment they hit the wire, the duelists had made a footnote out of the impressive time. Despite the slow early going, which precluded any challenge to Secretariat’s Belmont record of 2:24, Affirmed’s winning time of 2:264/5 was still the third-fastest in the race’s history. Never before had the Belmont seen a faster closing mile (1:364/5) or faster closing half mile (492/5)—a remarkable pace coming as it did at the end of a mile-and-a-half marathon.
What was more, the duelists had made footnotes out of the also-rans. The closest pursuers, Darby Creek Road and Judge Advocate, were so far back entering the stretch that their trainers, Lou Rondinello and John Russell, would later both sheepishly admit that they had swung their binoculars from their own colts to the two superhorses locked in battle on the lead and had gotten caught up, like everyone else, watching the desperate duel to the finish. Only after Affirmed and Alydar had swept under the wire as a team did the two trainers return their gaze to their own colts, with plenty of time to catch Darby Creek Road straggling home third more than thirteen lengths back and Judge Advocate fourth another eight lengths back.
Old-timers dug deep into their memory banks and racing manuals trying to find a race as gripping and rousing as this one. The consensus choice had been the 1962 Travers Stakes when Jaipur and Ridan dueled so close that no one could tell whose nose was in front throughout the mile-and-a-quarter race or even at the wire—until the finish photo separated them by Jaipur’s flaring nostril. But now, even that race paled alongside this duel in which two sublime rivals pushed one another to the breaking point with the Triple Crown at stake. “The sum total of the parts made this the greatest race I’ve ever seen,” said New York Racing Association executive Pat Lynch, a former turf writer who had been watching races for five decades. “There was this enormous rivalry, and there has never been one like it before. Head-and-head from the top of the far turn to the wire. The only thing like this was the Hatfields and McCoys. They’ll be plunking guitars about this race for years to come.”
In the stable area at Belmont, they already were.
“Gosh, what a race,” gushed Billy Turner, who one year earlier had trained Seattle Slew to a Triple Crown win so dominating that jockey Jean Cruguet was standing in his stirrups and triumphantly waving his whip-clenching right arm through the final twenty yards of the Belmont stretch run. “They are some pair. Three crucial races, with so much at stake, and they ran them so close together. Win, lose, or draw, there was enough glory for both of them.”
“When people think about the Belmont Stakes of 1978,” echoed Hall of Fame trainer Phil Johnson, “they will say they saw it and will never forget it. That’s fine. I’ll remember it another way. Affirmed and Alydar really started fighting each other last August in the Hopeful at Saratoga. That’s when racetrackers started thinking of the two horses as something special. The way Laz Barrera trained Affirmed and John Veitch trained Alydar is beyond belief. Anyone who expects that two horses can run in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness and then come back in the Belmont and run head-to-head for the final mile is expecting too much. But they did it, didn’t they? I don’t know how they did it.”
After a horse race that could easily have been mistaken for a knock-down-drag-’em-out prizefight, the Ali-Frazier analogy never seemed more apt. Affirmed and Alydar had just capped their epic Triple Crown trilogy with the equine equivalent of Ali-Frazier III. Like The Thrilla in Manila three years earlier, this thriller in New York would be seared in the collective memory for its breathtaking drama and breathless climax: Alydar poking his nose ahead evoked Frazier wresting the momentum from Ali; Affirmed reaching deep down to reclaim the lead evoked Ali rallying back; the two colts’ final frantic drive to the wire evoked the two boxers savagely battling on until the fight was stopped with both seated in exhaustion. In the same manner Ali had retained his heavyweight crown, Affirmed earned his Triple Crown by surviving a grueling war of attrition that tested each rival’s will, resilience, and heart.
Woody Stephens, the Hall of Fame trainer who had turned himself into a Triple Crown spectator after futile third-place finishes in the Derby and Preakness, was still catching his breath after watching Affirmed and Alydar slug it out like Ali and Frazier all the way down the Belmont stretch when he spoke for hardened horsemen everywhere:
“Been around racing fifty years, and I’ve seen dawn come up over a lot of tracks,” said the sixty-four-year-old Stephens. “People will tell you about the great races between Citation and Noor out in California in the early fifties, and the race between Ridan and Jaipur in the Travers at Saratoga in 1962. Great races. But Affirmed and Alydar in the Belmont? Probably the best horse race that’s ever been run. I’ll look at it again and again anytime I’m fortunate enough to get the chance. I’ll raise a glass to ’em while I’m watchin’ the replays and, damn, I’ll root: ‘Come on, Affirmed! Come on, Alydar! Come on, Cauthen! Come on, Velasquez!’ ”
Stevens paused, as if savoring the stretch duel all over again in his mind’s eye. “Whatever it is that these two horses have cannot be bought or manufactured,” he said finally. “It’s the greatest act horse racing has ever had. I hope it never ends.”