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This Day In Sports…May 20, 1978:
In the Preakness at Pimlico, the second act of horse racing’s most fabled trilogy, Affirmed reprises his 1½-length Kentucky Derby victory, beating Alydar to the wire again by a neck. Affirmed trailed early, but entering the backstretch, he finally took the lead. Alydar was right there the rest of the way but was never quite able to catch up. Three weeks later, Affirmed would beat Alydar one more time at the Belmont Stakes to become only the 11th Triple Crown winner in history—but the second in a row, the year after Seattle Slew reached the milestone. And the third one of the 1970s.
Affirmed and Alydar formed one of the greatest horse racing rivalries of all time, and the 1978 Belmont Stakes, well, affirmed it. From 1977 through the summer of 1978, the two horses met 10 times, with Alydar winning seven. In the Belmont, Affirmed and Alydar were neck-and-neck again. The two were dead even with 1/16 of a mile to go when jockey Steve Cauthen asked Affirmed for more—and he moved ahead and won by a nose. The final matchup between Affirmed and Alydar came that August in the Grade 1 Travers Stakes, and Alydar won, but only because Affirmed was disqualified after the race.
Cauthen rode Affirmed to the Winner’s Circle in all three Triple Crown events, and he did so with a track record (literally). In 1977 Cauthen had become the first jockey to win over $6 million in a year. But he was still a teenager. Aboard Affirmed, the 18-year-old Cauthen became the youngest jockey ever to win the Triple Crown. And in December, 1978, Cauthen was the first jockey ever to be named Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsman of the Year.” He remains the only one. Cauthen just turned 65 on May 1—which still seems young for a 1970s sports legend.
There wouldn’t be another Triple Crown winner for 37 years, until American Pharoah did it in 2015. Unlike Affirmed, American Pharoah left no doubt in the clincher at the Belmont Stakes, leading wire-to-wire. After that long wait, it would take only three more years until another horse accomplished the feat, as Justify won all three races in 2018. Justify, a chestnut Stallion, had already made history at the Kentucky Derby by becoming the first horse since 1882 to win the Run For The Roses despite having not participated in any races as a two-year old.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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