Affirmed: The Last Triple Crown Winner

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Like Justify, Bob Baffert was his trainer. He was the only Triple Crown winner to navigate the races in that order. He won in , and Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons was the trainer. You can find the Sir Barton here. Justify drew the No.

The last Triple Crown: In 1978, Affirmed achieved what no horse has accomplished since

Trainer Bob Baffert was getting impatient Thursday morning waiting for the painfully slow tractors to finish conditioning the track so Justify could start his morning gallop. Skip to content Topics xml: But as the decades roll along, he becomes more and more an abstraction — shorthand for what others have not done in the 37 years since he ruled. His greatest accomplishment, the Triple Crown , has only grown in stature as a dozen brilliant 3-year-olds have tried — and failed — to match him on the dirt at Belmont Park. Yet Affirmed is little more than a line in history for many of the 90, racing fans who will pack the track Saturday to watch American Pharoah make the next attempt.

Affirmed hasn't been celebrated on the silver screen like Secretariat or headlined a No.

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When his story is told, he's invariably paired with Alydar, his antagonist in the greatest thoroughbred rivalry of modern times. Even in the years when he was the nation's best 2-year-old, then its best 3-year-old and finally its best 4-year-old, Affirmed was an underestimated character. He looked feminine to many observers, especially contrasted with the strapping beast Alydar. He didn't enter Triple Crown season undefeated like Seattle Slew or deliver an indelible beatdown on par with Secretariat's length victory at Belmont.

He even went through a five-race slump from the summer of into the beginning of , practically unprecedented for a horse of his quality. We accelerated like two rockets. It was the first time I had ever felt that on a horse. When seasoned racing observers let their minds drift back to Affirmed, they usually say two things: He was as smart a thoroughbred as they ever encountered and as tough an in-race fighter as they ever saw. So he had a strong rooting interest in believing Affirmed was beatable. Sometimes, it's the one who can look the other in the eye and say, 'You're not passing me.

His unusual awareness allowed him to make multiple moves in the same race. He liked to run on or near the lead.

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But he excelled at conserving energy and then summoning another burst when a rival challenged. It was this quality that gave him a consistent advantage over Alydar, who usually offered one big push per race. If Affirmed lacked historically brilliant speed, he made up for it by being good at every aspect of racing.

There wasn't a hair misplaced on that horse. He was always game. He won that one and seven of the nine he ran as a 2-year-old. Drawing on interviews with Cauthen, some members of the Wolfson family, and many more, Sahadi delivers fascinating subplots, including that of jockey Laffit Pincay, Jr. Telling a story that transcended the Thoroughbred racing world, Affirmed finally gives this courageous horse his due.

Sahadi specializes in writing about sports history and keeping the reader's interest from cover to cover, and he clearly succeeds here, aided by an already exciting story that just needed to be told by such a master of his craft.

Triple Crown Winner Affirmed Euthanized

This book is highly recommended for all fans of racing history, as well as to fans of American sports history, as the 's truly were the golden age of horse racing. A must read for everyone. Sahadi gets you so close to the action, you can almost smell the hay in the stalls of these two equine superstars.

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Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. I swear he could not wait to get the book over with and probably wrote it in hopes of generating a movie deal. Having witnessed many of the Alydar and Affirmed races in person as well as seeing them both run as four year olds, I can tell you the author not only left out a lot, but had many of his facts wrong.

The first warning sign I read that this could be a poorly written book was when he mentioned The Bid two or three times as a horse who preceded Affirmed. Affirmed and Alydar are most certainly deserving of a tremendous book to be written about them along with a movie. This most assuredly is NOT the book. Don't waste your money and instead wait for a better author to write a much better book.

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What can I say about this book, except that this book really described what this amazing horse could do against its foe Alydar. Even though the last and final race between these 2 horses after the Triple Crown ended in controversy, I still am in awe over this horse. Thank you to Lou Sahadi for writing this book and for making this horse live up to what it is Affirmed was a special horse, and a super horse, ranked up there with Seattle Slew and Secretariat. I love this book and I am so glad that I got it. One person found this helpful.

Read the Affirmed book with much fascination after seeing the movie based on Secretariat.

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