Every few years, when a talented three-year-old wins the
first two legs of the Triple Crown, foks start writing about the potential
impact of a Triple Crown winner. Sport’s
Illustrated’s Tim Layden is as good at it as anybody, and here is his piece
from last week’s magazine:
It's not enough that late on the afternoon of Saturday, June
9, at Belmont Park in New York, a powerful and determined chestnut colt named
I'll Have Another can become the first thoroughbred in 34 years to win racing's
Triple Crown, thus achieving one of the rarest feats in any sport. Apparently
he must also save the enterprise of horse racing itself, restoring it to a
place in American culture that it hasn't occupied in many decades and rescuing
it from a morass of ethical and financial problems that threaten it with
extinction. It's a lot to ask of a creature, however majestic, who spends 23
hours a day in a stall and eats his food from a plastic tub, but that's the
working story line.
This happens every spring, and with increasing fervor, when
a horse wins the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, thereby reaching the cusp of
history. I'll Have Another is the 12th such horse since the last Triple Crown
winner, Affirmed in 1978 (the third of the '70s, after Secretariat in '73 and
Seattle Slew in '77). And on each occasion, as May turns into June and the
Belmont draws closer, the whispers grow louder and more urgent: Racing needs a
Triple Crown winner. As if in the weeks after I'll Have Another flashes beneath
the finish wire at Belmont, fans will be climbing on steam trains to follow the
Big Horse on a barnstorming tour across America and television networks will be
clearing aside NFL programming to broadcast stakes races. It's wildly wishful
thinking that ignores the grim realities of the present and, worse, cheapens
the significance and wonder of what I'll Have Another might accomplish by
insisting that it become something more.
To read the rest of the article, click
here.
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