April 26, 1999. Copyright, 1999, Graphic News. All rights reserved

AMERICAÕS TRIPLE CROWN
By Midge Todhunter

LONDON, April 26, Graphic News:  IN America racehorses are for racing, and like everything else in that vast continent of competition and free enterprise, winning is everything. Little wonder then, that champion racehorses take on an icon status, on and off the track.

Winning all three legs of the ultra-competitive triple crown is how equine athletes graduate to immortality in U.S. racing history, beginning with AmericaÕs most famous racing day Ð the Kentucky Derby, always staged on the first Saturday in May, deep in the heart of Ôblue grass countryÕ.

Pass that test and two weeks later comes the Preakness Stakes, run on AmericaÕs second oldest track at Pimlico, Baltimore, and where the most valuable trophy in American sport Ð The Woodland Vase Ð awaits the victor. In the last five years Preakness crowds have averaged nearly half a million.

The whole roadshow then moves on to Belmont Park, New York State, and the final leg in early June, where the $1 million mile and a half Belmont Stakes is the showcase event of their spring meeting, set in the back yard of the ÔBig AppleÕ itself.

Open to three-year-olds only, a mere 11 horses have achieved the Triple Crown this century, although countless aspiring contenders have tried.

If this is criticism, then so be it, but in a land of variety and plenty where freedom of thought is said to lead to greatness, it does seem paradoxically dull that with over 100 race tracks spread across America, every single one is left-handed and oval. Even as a brief respite from sheer monotony they could spin a few races round the other way, as the French do at Maisons-Laffitte.
/ENDS