Great race - but it seemed anticlimactic to me for some reason I can’t put my finger on.
Yipee!
I particularly like that the owner bred the horse AND his sire. 
Do they still beat on the horses with riding crops?
I admit I know nothing about horse racing.
I love horse racing. Someone who was friend with my sister took me to the race track once and I made money on my first bet. But I have not gone back.
I don’t get it. I’d rather watch golf and I hate golf.
What are his potential stud fees now?
Horses make the best neighbors. They don’t party, bark, or play loud music until midnight. They need plenty of space so they create a nice buffer between properties. 
Yay to the winner!
Do you have equine neigh-bors @BunsenBurner?
The racing association has to approve the names. Secretariat was like the 5th or 7th try, and the owners just called him Red.
LOL! Not next door, but there are some down the street! Kiddo used to save her lunch carrots to give the neigh-bors treats as she walked home. Sadly, the pastures are being replaced with housing developments.
Back to the Triple Crown!
Here are the official rules for names – scroll to Item 6. It’s complicated…
http://www.registry.jockeyclub.com/registry.cfm?Page=tjcRuleBook#six
I hear you, eb. I feel like I should be more excited after 37 years. After Secretariat, maybe everything is anticlimactic.
It’s definitely nice to be able to share a TC winner with my now college aged kids! They weren’t around in the 70s, of course, so had seen all the hypes over their years, but never saw the golden ring get snagged.
Add me to those who are glad to see a homebred win it.
I just wish they weren’t retiring him after his 3 year old year. Saying “this is for the sport and all of America” then retiring him so soon is rather contradictory and shows that the breeding money is truly more important to them than the sport (sigh).
I know very little about horse racing but I did hear that they will continue racing him for the rest of this season. The commentators were happy that he wasn’t being retired immediately.
I’d love to better understand the genetics behind horse racing. Stuff I learned after a couple of hours of enjoyable googling: Native Dancer is considered one of the best studs as he passed on so many of his good traits. And Man O’War passed on not only his good genes but apparently his nasty personality. They say a colt from MOW had almost 100% chance of having a really bad temperament.
Originally Secretariat was a big disappointment at stud as none of his colts did much. Then it dawned in the racing world that his colts were busts, but his daughters were really high quality. I’m not sure I understand how that works but his female descendants put him back in the charts as an influential stud. One of his daughters is considered perhaps the best brood mare in generations. American Pharoah is descended from her She and her dad are in American Pharoah’s pedigree.
Last thing I learned is, I’ll probably never remember how to spell “pharaoh/pharoah” properly ever again.
I loved watching it, I was rooting for Pharoah because he seems like such a nice horse, they said on the broadcast last night that he loves it when people come to visit, there was a great picture of him with the reporter where the reporter is standing in from of Pharoah and he has his head hanging over the guys shoulder. He just seemed to love to run, and apparently down the stretch Espinoza actually let go of the reigns and just let him go (which is probably why he blew out the field lol). Racehorses are often temperamental and can be nasty, but he seems to have the temperament of a quarter horse, which is kind of cool. Espinoza ran a great race, he got in front, held a moderate pace through a lot of it, and then at the end smoked the other horses, who were gassed (Belmont is a rough track, the main track is a mile and a half,a 1/4 mile larger than the next largest of the tracks). What is amazing is that as good a race as Pharoah ran, Secretariat would have blown him out by 15 lengths had they ran the same race they did in winning the Belmont, that is amazing.
One thing I am glad of, I watched it at home. I was at the Belmont Stakes last year, and it was not a pleasant experience, the LIRR totally screwed up and traveling by train was a nightmare (we got stuck in a train that was packed literally wall to wall, the ventilation/ac wasn’t working, my wife almost passed out from the heat, if I could have gotten my hands on the schmuck who runs the LIRR that day he would have been in traction for a week), and they so oversold tickets to Belmont that it was absolutely a riot waiting to happen (I hear this year they limited the tickets sold). It was sad, because Belmont is a beautiful park (the outside, the inside of the park not so much).
I also am glad for the family that owns the horse. I know there has been a lot of controversy about them, but it is still an interesting story and they seem to really love their horses. The son,who runs the business, just graduated NYU (I think he is 23), but he has been running the business apparently since he was 15. A couple of years ago one of their horses (I think its name was paynter) had a bad accident at the track, broke something in its leg, and rather than destroying the horse,which would be par for the course, they spent a lot of money on 24 hour a day veterinary care, and from what I know the horse survived and is retired to the farm, I thought that was kind of neat, that they were willing to do that.
I’ve noticed that a lot of times these days, people will misspell “rein” as “reign.” I even saw it in the newspaper! They will write “reign it in,” for example.
I guess this shows how much less horse-oriented we are now than we used to be, as a society.
But Secretariat won that race by 31 lengths, so if Pharoah had come in second by a mere 15, it still would have been an astonishing performance.
Another thing to note: I believe that every other horse yesterday was fresher than Pharoah. He was the only one who’d run in both the Derby and the Preakness.
@Creekland after seeing the heartbreak with Barbaro at the Preakness a few years back, I’m not surprised that an owner would want to retire a horse so soon after such great success. These horses go through a lot physically, and I imagine they don’t want to take any chances with his health at this stage.
Would you have cashed your Win ticket yesterday?
The 8-horse field matched the largest that any triple crown winner has had to face in the Belmont Stakes. Citation (1948) and Seattle Slew (1977) also beat 7 other horses. 7 of the 12 triple crown winners – including Secretariat – faced 4 or fewer challengers in the Belmont. Man O’ War, while not a triple crown winner (his owner didn’t run him in the Derby) but still recognized as one of the best ever, won a match race in the 1920 Belmont Stakes.
So, if American Pharoah’s win wasn’t impressive just because of the size of the field, then no other triple crown clinchers should be either.
Do you get that much money out of a favorite to win, the odds are low I bet.