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Secretariat (horse)
The 1973 Belmont is the race to watch. Secretariat opened a gap of 31 lengths and finished the mile and a half in 2 minutes 24 seconds. The margin explains why a race that completed the Triple Crown is remembered almost as much for the space behind him.
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Red Rum
Watch the end of the 1973 Grand National, when Red Rum ran down Crisp at Aintree. That was the first of three wins in the race, followed by victories in 1974 and 1977. The third tells you how long he stayed competitive. The first shows how late in a steeplechase the lead can change.
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Phar Lap
Phar Lap won the Melbourne Cup in 1930, then took on a very different field in Mexico and won the 1932 Agua Caliente Handicap. That second race helps explain why his story spread so far from Australia and New Zealand. There was a result on the other side of the Pacific to go with the reputation.
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Zenyatta
Zenyatta came from last to win the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Classic, the first female horse to win it. The 2010 replay makes a revealing second watch. She came charging again, but Blame held the lead and handed her the first loss of her career.
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Man o' War
Man o’ War lost once in 21 starts, to a horse named Upset in the 1919 Sanford Memorial. His response was a three-year-old season without a defeat. Read the record around that one reversal to see how much a single result stands out against two seasons of winning.
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Seabiscuit
At Pimlico in 1938, Seabiscuit met the previous year’s Triple Crown winner War Admiral in a race with only the two of them. He won by four lengths. The head-to-head format makes the result easy to read even if you have never watched a race chart.
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Citation (horse)
Citation won 19 of his 20 starts in 1948, the year he took the Triple Crown. Watch for that workload in the record. The three classics tell part of the story. What sets the season apart is how often he ran and won around them.
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Affirmed
The 1978 Triple Crown is a rivalry in three parts. Alydar finished second to Affirmed in all three races, each time closer at the finish. Look up the Belmont stretch run to see what a Triple Crown can look like when the same rival stays alongside almost to the line.
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Seattle Slew
No horse had finished the American Triple Crown with an unbeaten record before Seattle Slew did it in 1977. Following his wins from the Derby to the Belmont makes it easier to see what that distinction means. Each new distance or field was another test he got through without a defeat.
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American Pharoah
American Pharoah ended a 37-year Triple Crown wait in 2015, then won the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland. Pull up the Belmont and the Classic together. One finished the spring series for three-year-olds, and the other showed how far his season went beyond it.
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Kelso (horse)
Kelso was voted Horse of the Year five years running, from 1960 through 1964. Look beyond a single race to see the point of keeping a great older horse in training. Season after season, people could return to a track and see whether the same horse still set the standard.
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Rachel Alexandra
Rachel Alexandra won the 2009 Preakness against male three-year-olds. She then faced older horses in the Woodward and led all the way. The Woodward is a good replay if you want to see a lead that had to be defended long before the finish line.
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Cigar (horse)
Cigar stretched his winning streak to 16 races. One of those was the inaugural Dubai World Cup in 1996, when a horse already proven in the United States carried that form to a new international race. Try that replay for a winning streak that held up far from home.
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Ruffian (horse)
Ruffian won all ten of the races she completed. Her 1975 sweep of New York’s Acorn, Mother Goose, and Coaching Club American Oaks gives you three places to see how she used her speed to control races from the front.
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Eclipse (horse)
The eighteenth-century chestnut raced without a defeat, but his name outlasted the meetings he won. Search a later Thoroughbred pedigree for Eclipse and you begin to see why. His influence as a sire is a big part of how people remember a horse they could never have seen run.
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Frankel (horse)
Frankel retired unbeaten in 14 starts. The 2012 Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot is an especially clear replay because he put 11 lengths between himself and the next horse over just a mile. It gives a viewer a better sense of the record than the number 14 on its own.
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Sea the Stars
Sea The Stars won a highest-level Group 1 race in each month from May to October 2009. The sequence included the Epsom Derby and ended with the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Follow the run across the season for a horse whose reputation rests on keeping that level up for months.
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Enable (horse)
Enable won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp and the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Churchill Downs in 2018, the first horse to do both in one year. Watch the finish against Magical in Kentucky. It shows how much she still had to do after arriving with the French win already behind her.
More about Enable (horse)19
Black Caviar
Black Caviar retired with 25 wins from 25 starts. Her narrow Diamond Jubilee win at Royal Ascot is a useful counterpoint to that tidy record. It gives you a chance to see how close an unbeaten career can come to ending during one trip abroad.
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Makybe Diva
Makybe Diva won the Melbourne Cup in 2003, 2004 and 2005. She carried more weight on the third run than in either of the first two. Compare the three finishes to see why the achievement stands out in a long race where the weight assignments are part of the challenge.
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Winx (horse)
The Cox Plate shows one kind of repeat excellence. Winx won it four times in a row, and those wins were part of a 33-race winning streak. Follow the four replays if you want to see how much of a reputation comes from returning to the same race and giving the crowd another reason to believe it.
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