Affirmed’s crown came 30 years ago

Thirty years later, Patrice Wolfson still can feel the grandstand at Belmont Park shaking as Affirmed and Alydar battled down the track’s yawning stretch.

Affirmed was a half-mile from history in the Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown, Alydar was a half-mile from redemption. A rivalry largely unmatched in sports was ready for its defining moment.

The stands began swaying as the horses passed the quarter pole, Affirmed jockey Steve Cauthen holding on gamely as Alydar pulled even. In the stands, Alydar trainer John Veitch swelled with emotion when his sinewy colt appeared to barely edge in front.

“I thought I had him, and at the 16th pole I did,” Veitch said.

At the wire he didn’t, as Cauthen – jammed against the rail by Alydar’s jockey, Jorge Velasquez – switched the whip from his right hand to his left. He’d never done it before. He’d never had to.

Yet, as Affirmed always seemed to do when asked for just a little more, he dug in. Affirmed lunged to the lead in the final yards to win by a neck and become the 11th horse in history to sweep the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont.

“It was all tenacity, it was all grit,” recalled Wolfson, who co-owned the horse with her husband, Louis. “It was just him wanting to win.”

Affirmed’s triumph in 1978 made him the third Triple Crown winner in six years and came at the end of horse racing’s Golden Era, an age that gave rise to some of the sport’s most iconic horses, from Citation to Secretariat to Seattle Slew to Affirmed and Alydar.

Though there have been plenty of stars since, from Alysheba to Barbaro, none has joined racing’s most exclusive club.

“I should have pulled it off last year,” said Carl Nafzger, trainer of 2007 Derby winner Street Sense. “When I took that lead in the Preakness, I should have won the thing. My horse just slacked off there and Curlin ate us up.”

It’s a fate that’s become all too familiar for Triple Crown hopefuls. Ten horses over the last 29 years have won the Derby and the Preakness only to come up short in the Belmont, where dreams of racing immortality can come crashing down in the unforgiving final stretch of the grueling 1 1/2 -mile test.

“It just showed it’s a damn tough thing to do,” said Cauthen, who was the toast of the racing world at 18, then retired from riding in the early 1990s and now owns a horse farm in northern Kentucky. “It seems like the Michael Jordans of the world are here by divine whatever, and then they disappear and you don’t see them for a while.”

The current drought is the longest between Triple Crown winners. For a sport struggling to remain relevant, there’s hope one of the 20 horses who make their way into the starting gate for Saturday’s Kentucky Derby can succeed where the last 29 crops of 3-year-olds have failed.

It won’t be easy. Certainly not as easy as Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed made it seem in the 1970s. There was talk after Affirmed’s victory of adjusting the distances because the feat had become too commonplace. They don’t talk about that anymore.

Instead, the discussion has turned to why horses can’t seem to deliver, though there have been three agonizingly close calls in the last 11 years. Silver Charm, Real Quiet and Smarty Jones all entered the Belmont with a chance at the crown. All three led late in the race. All three finished second.

In 1997, Silver Charm led deep in the stretch but couldn’t hold off Touch Gold and lost by a half-length. A year later, Real Quiet seemed to have things well in hand, leading by four lengths midway through the stretch, only to lose by a nose to a charging Victory Gallop.

Smarty Jones’ popularity soared in 2004 when he took the Derby and the Preakness and entered the Belmont unbeaten. Yet he tired late after an exhausting early pace and couldn’t hold off Birdstone.

“I just think the distance got him,” Cauthen said. “At the three-sixteenths pole he still looked like he could win, and he just hit the wall.”

In Affirmed’s stretch run at the Belmont, Cauthen patted the horse on the shoulder twice with his right hand. It still wasn’t enough to shake Alydar. Cauthen was ready to give Affirmed the usual encouragement with the whip, but didn’t have room to do it right-handed without hitting Velasquez and Alydar, who were inches to the outside.

Cauthen switched hands for the first time in his career aboard Affirmed.

Even he wasn’t sure how the colt would respond.

“I didn’t feel as confident with my left hand. It was a last resort for me,” said Cauthen. “That day I knew we were going to have to find something else.”

No other horse in 30 years has been able to react quite as heroically.

Nafzger said it’s become so easy for trainers to ship their top horses across the country that the fields are more talented. When Affirmed and Alydar met in the Derby, there were 11 horses in the race. There will be 20 in the gate at this year’s Derby.

“You start throwing all these top horses against each other all the time, I tell you what, it’s a whole new ballgame,” he said. “I’m not saying Alydar and Affirmed weren’t tough, but it’s no longer a small world.”