american pharoah · equine athletes and horse culture into the national dialogue and mainstream...

American PharoahOVERALL HORSE OF THE YEAR

BY JENNIFER B. CALDER

In 2015, American Pharoah broke a 37-year Triple Crown dry spell and became the first horse to secure the newly minted Grand Slam of Racing. Piloted by Victor Espinoza, he battled the slop in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico (Md.) for the second leg of the challenge. BARBARA D. LIVINGSTON PHOTO

February 1 & 8, 2016 • chronofhorse.com 23

David O’Connor pressed shoulder to shoulder with 30 other horsemen around a small hotel lobby television

in Bromont, Quebec. Jimmy Wofford stood in front of an even smaller 9" x 12" monitor in a press trailer with two colleagues in Tryon, N.C., miked for the upcoming grand prix, which was being delayed to allow the broadcast from New York to play on the ring’s Jumbotron. John and Beezie Madden desperately fought traffic to get back to their hotel from the Spruce Meadows showgrounds in Calgary, Alberta, aborting when they realized they wouldn’t make it and searching instead for a sports bar. George Morris found a television. Bill Steinkraus did the same. At the Blenheim Classic Horse Show (Calif.), competitors and spectators gathered around televisions in VIP tents.

You get the idea.The Chronicle of the Horse stopped

covering flat racing many years ago, but this year the accomplishments of a muscular bay with a barely visible star and abbreviated tail captivated not only those passionate about horse sports—but also an entire nation.

For this achievement, for quenching a 37-year drought and winning the inaugural Grand Slam of Racing (the Triple Crown races plus the Breeders’ Cup Classic), as well as reintroducing equine athletes and horse culture into the national dialogue and mainstream media, we honor American Pharoah as our Overall Horse of the Year.

A Rising Tide Lifts All BoatsAn extraordinary equine athlete is an extraordinary athlete regardless of whether the horse is galloping 40 miles per hour around a track or piaffing down the centerline. Perhaps few are as cognizant of the tremendous effort that goes into such a feat—the hours upon endless hours of pre-dawn training stretching into dusky nights, the worry, the care, the management of raw talent—as fellow horsemen.

Those elusive, history-defining moments when it all comes together transcend disciplines.

“To have a horse win the Triple Crown after 37 years and to be able to celebrate an athlete like that is unbe-

Description: 4-year-old, 16.1-hand, bay Thoroughbred stallion (Pioneerof The Nile—Littleprincessemma, Yankee Gentleman) with a tiny spot on fore-head, born Feb. 2, 2012, Groundhog Day. Nickname: Pharoah.Back Home Again: American Pharoah was repurchased by Zayat Stables for $300,000 at the Saratoga Select Yearling sale (N.Y.) in August 2013 when bidding stalled. Ahmed Zayat, unimpressed with the attention his homebred colt received leading into the sale, was prepared to spend up to $1 million to bring him home. Though his sire Pioneerof The Nile was a second-placed finisher in the 2009 Kentucky Derby, he was unproven in the breeding shed. No Spell Check: American Pharoah was mistakenly misspelled at some point during the registration process with The Jockey Club. As misspellings are often intentional to distinguish a horse’s pedigree or for personal reasons, they are not flagged by The Jockey Club, and the mistake remained as his registered name. Bob Cut: American Pharoah’s tail was chewed off in the field by another horse. American Riches: American Pharoah’s stud fee is $200,000 per live foal. A stallion typically books 200 mares a year. Do the math: He may bring in $40 million dollars his first year alone.

1st — Grade 2 Rebel Stakes, Oaklawn Park (Ark.) 1st — Grade 1 Arkansas Derby, Oaklawn Park (Ark.) 1st — Grade 1 Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs (Ky.) 1st — Grade 1 Preakness Stakes, Pimlico Racecourse (Md.) 1st — Grade 1 Belmont Stakes, Belmont Park (N.Y.) 1st — Grade 1 William Hill Haskell Invitational Stakes, Monmouth Park Racecourse (N.J.) 2nd — Grade 1 Travers Stakes, Saratoga Race Course (N.Y.) 1st — Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Classic, Keeneland Racecourse (Ky.) Eclipse awards for Horse of the Year, Breeder of the Year (Zayat Stables), Trainer of the Year (Bob Baffert)

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2015 Competitive Highlights

lievable,” said Olympic gold medalist O’Connor. “I think it shines a light on the fact that horses are tremendous athletes, how hard they work to do a job they enjoy. It’s great for all horse sports because we live in this world and can get a little ‘gerbil on the wheel’ about just doing our own deal. But to be able to celebrate an athleticism like that? It’s great. It really is; it is fantastic! That makes us all feel good, in our world.”

There is also the recognition among horsemen that a rising tide lifts all boats.

“That horse impacted the world, not just our world. And why is that impor-tant? Well, for a lot of different reasons,” explained eventing legend Wofford. “The first thing is, America no longer glorifies the horse culture the way it did say, 50 years ago, when I was growing up. Think of John Wayne on a chestnut horse, cantering into the sunset—that was part of the American dream. Now so much of American society is mecha-nized and computerized.

“We have a very, very limited ability—‘we’ the horse world—have a very limited ability to reach out to the general public, but a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence like this captures the public imagination, and horses re-enter the national conversation,” he added. “Now, if you step into a taxi in New York City and say ‘American Pharoah’ you are going to talk all the way to your destina-tion about that horse because they have re-entered the American imagination. And no matter how many gold medals we win or how many successful teams we field, that won’t do it. That, to me, is American Pharoah’s big contribution.

“The other is he showed that the Triple Crown is possible. It’s just incred-ibly difficult,” Wofford concluded.

When you have a horse grace the pages of Vogue and People magazines, when a horse is a candidate (and winning the popular vote in an online poll) for Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year title, a finalist for an ESPY, and awarded the Associated Press “Sports Story of the Year,” it’s obvious some-thing remarkable has occurred. Heck, jockey Victor Espinoza was a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars.” It’s hard to get more mainstream than that.

Few may understand the

24 The Chronicle of the Horse

American Pharoah quickly became a media darling due to his astonishing athletic prowess on the track and his sweet demeanor off. Alongside assistant trainer Jimmy Barnes, Pharoah greeted the media on the backside of Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., the morning after his Kentucky Derby win. BARBARA D. LIVINGSTON PHOTO

benefits more than Jan Ebeling, whose Rafalca was catapulted onto the national stage when Stephen Colbert declared dressage the “Sport of the Summer” in 2012, leading into the London Olympic Games.

“I feel that the more horse talk there is, the better for all of us,” Ebeling said. “It builds an awareness about horses that is good for all disciplines. The more publicity the horse gets, the better.”

This is something Donna Barton Brothers, a former jockey who covers racing as well as other major horse competitions for NBC, witnessed.

“Whenever you have an athlete like that in any discipline, everybody who loves horses is rooting for him,” she said. “Take Totilas. People from all disciplines were suddenly interested

in watching this horse perform dres-sage, just like people from all disciplines were suddenly interested in watching American Pharoah run. Any time a great horse comes along, anybody who’s ever been interested in horses wants to watch greatness happen.

“Also, the magic of an equine athlete at that level—the fluidity, the strength, the perfection, everything you’ve ever dreamed of riding if you’ve ever ridden a horse—just getting to see it and thinking, ‘Oh my God, what must that feel like?’ I think everybody becomes enamored with it,” she continued.

John Madden agreed. “I think anybody who loves horses has to admire and respect the accomplishment because it’s just real hard to do,” he said. “There are certain contests—and I am talking about the major, major cham-pionships: the Olympics, the World Equestrian Games, the World Cup Finals—you can’t luck into those. You can luck into winning a grand prix; you can prepare and have a good horse get a little better and win a stakes race. It just takes a better horse and better manage-

ment and better everything to win a Triple Crown.

“You can’t do it with smoke and mirrors,” Madden continued. “You just have to be better than the others. To me, the great thing about horse sports is sometimes we can measure or really see the greatness in the horse. I think that raises the majesty of the horse sport, and that is something that the horse just gives you. You can’t take it from them. They have to give it to you.”

And boy, did American Pharoah give it.

Always A BridesmaidThe journey to the “where-were-you-whens” began with a homebred foal by an untested sire, Pioneerof The Nile, and out of a dam named Littleprincessemma, owned by the Zayat family of Zayat Stables.

Pioneerof The Nile was the first grade 1 winning homebred for the Zayats and would finish second in the stable’s first Kentucky Derby bid in 2009, getting famously beaten by the 50-1 long shot Mine That Bird. The Zayats would


Fans flocked to American Pharoah at every opportunity, hoping to get a

touch of greatness. “I remember at the winner’s circle at Belmont, he could

barely breathe,” said Justin Zayat. “He had maybe 100 hands touching him at the time, and he didn’t flinch. We

were all flinching more than he was!” BARBARA D. LIVINGSTON PHOTO

Competitors at horse shows around the country, including in the VIP tent at the WCHR West Coast Spectacular (Calif.), stopped to watch coverage of the Belmont Stakes on June 6. MOLLIE BAILEY PHOTO

return to the Kentucky Derby in 2011 with Nehro and, again, finish second. Same story in 2012 with Bodemeister.

Justin Zayat, 23, the racing and stal-lion manager for Zayat Stables and son of patriarch owner Ahmed Zayat (Ahmed was a show jumper in his native Egypt as a boy), is still speaking in all exclamations, although several months have passed since “Pharoah” crossed the wire to win his last race, the Breeders’ Cup Classic, by 6 ½ lengths, devastating the previous track record at Keeneland (Ky.) by more than 5 seconds.

“Let me tell you a story, a part of what makes all this so unbelievable. We were beginning to think that maybe it wasn’t in the cards for the Zayats to win the Kentucky Derby. We’re the bridesmaids of the Kentucky Derby!” Justin said, laughing.

“We were always the runner-up. Then, all of a sudden, American Pharoah, who is the son of Pioneerof The Nile and Littleprincessemma—who is named for my little sister—[becomes] this freak of nature who broke the Zayat curse of the Kentucky Derby

OVERALL HORSE


While few would argue that anointing a new Triple Crown winner has

anything but positive implications for the sport, the lasting impact on racing and the creation of wider mainstream fan base remains to be seen.

Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated exquisitely and eloquently docu-mented every hoof step of American Pharoah’s quest and has been the racing correspondent for the maga-zine since Bill Nack retired in 2002.

“There is no doubt that everything American Pharoah did this year crossed over, which is an overused term, but there is no question he became part of the mainstream sports and cultural conversation,” said Layden. “The second part of the equation is what kind of legs does that have, in terms of bringing horses back in the mainstream? My argument has always been that horse racing is not coming back into the mainstream in the foreseeable future. Most sports are niche sports, the exception being the NFL. Every sport

has its own particular audience. I think horse racing is great where it is as a sport. It has a very passionate audience.

“People became so obsessed over the years with the idea of some horse winning the Triple Crown, and the operative phrase became that racing needs a Triple Crown winner. My view is that it really doesn’t change anything. Having a horse win the Triple Crown is great. It’s great for the sport and great for everyone to get excited about, and I do think there is a little bit of residual effect, but I think it really is minimal. And that doesn’t diminish what it was! I think this was great, and I loved covering it. And I don’t think racing is in a terrible place. I just don’t think it changes where racing is, that’s all.

“But,” he conceded, “The horse crossed over, and everyone knows who he is. Now you can actually walk into your neighborhood Starbucks and ask, ‘Name a horse?’ and some-body might actually say American Pharoah and not Secretariat.”

OVERALL HORSE

Does This Really Change Anything?

Justin Zayat, the racing and stallion manager for Zayat Stables and son of patriarch owner Ahmed Zayat, celebrated the Triple Crown win. “I am so thankful for American Pharoah, for what he has done for us and for the racing industry as a whole. He brought the game back into the limelight,” said Justin. TOD MARKS PHOTO

and ended the drought of the Triple Crown,” he continued. “It’s mesmer-izing to me!”

Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert knows too well the bridesmaid feeling. In 1997 with Silver Charm and 1998 with Real Quiet, Baffert won the first two legs of the Triple Crown, only to take second both years in the Belmont Stakes. The same story played out again in 2002 with War Emblem, although that year his horse would stumble coming out of the gate and finish eighth in the Belmont. Baffert has walked almost too many horses to count from the dusty backsides of Churchill Downs, Pimlico and Belmont during his lengthy career.

But there was something unique about Pharoah.

“I could tell he was different when he won at Del Mar [grade 1 Del Mar Futurity, Sept. 3, 2014]. I think I’ve won that race like 10 times or more,” said Baffert. “I’ve won with some really nice horses, like Silver Charm, some good horses that ran fast, but none of them did it the way he did it. He just did it differently.”

The win at Del Mar in the colt’s 2-year-old year would be followed by an easy win in the Santa Anita Grade 1 FrontRunner Stakes (Calif.) just a few weeks later.

“You don’t know if he’s going to run two turns until you do it. When he turned for home, usually there is an imaginary wall they hit, and they start to struggle. They win, but they sort of struggle a little bit. He just caught more gears. He did it effortlessly, and I thought, ‘Wow! Wow. What a horse,’ ” Baffert said.

An injury, the only of his career, would sideline Pharoah from the prestigious Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in October of 2014. Despite this, he would still be awarded the Eclipse Award for Champion Two-Year-Old Colt.

Then the calendar changed, the horse turned 3, and he was back in the spring


OVERALL HORSE

“He tried so hard to win,” said Bob Baffert of American Pharoah in the Travers, the only 2015 start he didn't win. “He tried hard, and

that, to me, was probably one of his best races because he was completely empty

at the 3/8th pole, and he still looked that horse [Frosted] in the eye and said, ‘Nooooo,

you’re not going to beat me.’ ” BARBARA D. LIVINGSTON PHOTO

of 2015 taking first in the grade 2 Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park (Ark.), followed by a devastatingly phenomenal perfor-mance in the grade 1 Arkansas Derby, thereby securing his spot that first Saturday in May in the 2015 Kentucky Derby.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Triple Crown ReflectionsTalking with Baffert now, after the track dust has settled a bit, he exudes grati-tude. And a hint of melancholy.

“The summer seemed like it went so fast. I just wish I could go back and relive it,” he said. “My wife still watches a video of him every day. Every trainer dreams of having a horse like this, and when you do, until they are gone [Pharoah is now standing at stud at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud in Kentucky and is no longer at Baffert’s California barn]—and I’ve had a couple of months now to think about it—it’s sort of sad…” Baffert trailed off.

“I kept his stall empty for a while,” he finally confessed. “He was a horse for the ages. I was so fortunate to get to train him. In Thoroughbred racing, the sky is the limit, and we got above the clouds, which is a place very few people have been. It’s just started to sink in that, ‘Wow, we really accomplished a lot.’ It could be a long time before we see another horse like this. He put racing back on the map.”

Justin’s outlook mirrors Baffert’s. “I am so thankful for American Pharoah, for what he has done for us and for the racing industry as a whole,” he said. “I think it gave racing the huge boost in the arm that we needed.

American Pharoah was repurchased by Zayat Stables for $300,000 at the 2013

Saratoga Select Yearling Sale (N.Y.) when bidding stalled. Ahmed Zayat, unimpressed

with the attention his homebred colt received leading into the sale, was prepared to spend up to $1 million dollars to bring him

home. BARBARA D. LIVINGSTON PHOTO


Everyone was kind of doubting if it was even possible to have a Triple Crown winner, and they were talking this past year about changing the timing of the races because they thought it was just too hard nowadays.

“He brought the game back into the limelight,” he continued of the horse who is the only equine besides John Henry, in 1981, to be unanimously voted the Horse of the Year for the Eclipse Award. “My friends now watch racing, and they never watched horse racing. All the attention in mainstream media brings attention to the sport, hopefully bringing in new investors, new players, new fans. The whole circle, every single person benefits from American Pharoah.”

A Perfect HorseRacing has its critics, perhaps some well-founded, but part of what made American Pharoah so easy to root for,

Trainer Bob Baffert (right), who shared his affection for American Pharoah with his wife Jill and son Bode, admitted that the horse’s kind disposition gave him a special place in the barn. “He was so kind and sweet. Sweet! Never bit anybody, just so sweet, a baby, a pet. He’d put his head on your shoulder and leave it there,” said Bob. BARBARA D. LIVINGSTON PHOTO

beyond the historical component, was that he simply loved to run. Watch him. He loved it. He covered the ground effortlessly, his legs folding and unfolding with elegant fluidity—one of those rare creatures so carefully put together your breath catches. All this with ears pricked forward alongside competitors who usually had theirs pinned back.

“He was so happy and just loved his job,” said Justin. “Bob would always make that joke to me: ‘You know, the one day we see those ears pulled back, we’ll know he’s done.’ He was just so eager and going.”

There is some elusive, magical amalgamation that occurs in all extraor-dinary athletes—the marriage of a great mind with superior ability and talent—and Pharoah possessed these, along with a charming charisma.

“This horse was very well-liked,” said Baffert. “I would compare him to Steph

Curry of the Golden State Warriors. Or Muhammad Ali. Bart Starr, Joe Montana, Peyton Manning. People, I myself, when we watch a sport, it’s not about, ‘It’s a great team,’ it’s about the individual personality of the players, and I think Pharoah was the one people tuned in to see. He really caught every-one’s imagination, and people just fell in love with him.”

A focused beast of a competitor on the track, Pharoah was a gentle soul away from it, highly unusual for a 3-year-old stallion. His laidback demeanor and love of people was something Baffert tried to share, often leading the horse out to meet his fans, letting them feed him carrots, touch him.

“We really miss him so much,” he said again.

“We normally don’t get too close to these good horses because they don’t stick around—they go to the breeder—but we got so close to him because of his disposition,” Baffert added. “He was so kind and sweet. Sweet! Never bit anybody, just so sweet, a baby, a pet. He’d put his head on your shoulder and leave it there. Then you get him on the

OVERALL HORSE


Traveling with American Pharoah became akin to “traveling with the Beatles,” said trainer Bob Baffert. KELSEY DANNER PHOTO

track, and he’d change into this domi-neering horse. Then he’d turn it right off again. I still can’t believe he was in our barn.”

Justin agreed: “His personality is second to none. I’ve seen little toddlers come by him, and he doesn’t do anything. Sometimes these horses are alpha males and tougher horses, and he just happens to be a pet. He’s a perfect horse.

“I remember at the winner’s circle at Belmont, he could barely breathe. He had maybe 100 hands touching him at the time, and he didn’t flinch. We were all flinching more than he was!” he added, laughing.

Like Traveling With The BeatlesLarge numbers of viewers tune in to watch the Belmont Stakes, at least when the first two legs have been won by the same horse (which has happened 13 times since Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978). They want to see if maybe, just maybe, this will be the year. The Haskell and Travers, however important to hardcore racing fans, are sometimes

overlooked by the more casual. This year that changed. “Every single one of the shows [NBC]

did after American Pharoah won the Preakness—the Belmont Stakes, the Haskell, the Travers, the Breeders’ Cup—the viewership was up over prior years by a long way because of American Pharoah,” said Brothers.

It wasn’t just viewership that increased. Morning works were popu-lated by thousands of fans standing four deep along the rail, and come race day, tickets sold out.

Traveling with the horse became akin to “traveling with the Beatles,” said Baffert. And travel Pharoah did, criss-crossing the country numerous times on a plane nicknamed “Air Horse One.”

Coming off a Triple Crown victory, the prevailing wisdom would be to retire the horse to stud, but the Zayats sportingly decided to continue racing.

Michael Matz, an Olympic show jumper and member of the Show Jumping Hall of Fame turned trainer who won the 2006 Kentucky Derby with Barbaro and the 2012 Belmont with Union Rags, said, “I take my hat off to

them. I know sometimes a horse just gets too expensive, and the insurance gets to the point that it’s too expensive that it’s hard to do, but I think they did run him for the public and the sport. I think it was a good situation.” There was the sold-out crowd in New Jersey for the grade 1 Haskell in early August, which saw Pharoah win almost casu-ally, galloping around the track with Espinoza all but standing up in the irons.

Nowhere, though, was his rock star status more evident than in Saratoga, N.Y., last summer when he came to run in the Travers at the end of August—or “Pharoah-Toga,” as the town was nicknamed.

The Saratoga track, aptly cursed as the “Graveyard of Champions,” held true for Pharoah just as it had done for Man O’War, Gallant Fox and Secretariat. The stunned, above-capacity crowd watched their Triple Crown champion lose only the second race of his career (the other came in the horse’s first race the August before).

Despite this, Baffert thinks the Travers was the gutsiest performance of Pharoah’s campaign, and he blames himself for the defeat.

He really caught

everyone’s imagination, and people just fell in love with

him.”—BOB BAFFERT


“If he had his A-game I knew it wouldn’t matter who else was in the race,” said Bob Baffert of American Pharoah’s final race and victory in the Breeders’ Cup. BARBARA D. LIVINGSTON PHOTO

A sold-out and boisterous crowd gathered at Belmont Park to witness the quenching of a 37-year Triple Crown drought. JOHN BAMBURY PHOTO

“When I went to Saratoga, even though it didn’t turn out like I hoped, it was the most incredible couple of days,” he said. “We got a little too caught up in the fanfare. We got too excited the day before. We changed it up a little bit; they wanted me to train at a certain time so people could come out and watch, and we changed our schedule to their schedule, which was not a good idea. But he tried so hard to win. He tried hard and that, to me, was probably one of his best races because he was completely empty at the 3/8th pole, and he still looked that horse [Frosted] in the eye and said, ‘Nooooo, you’re not going to beat me.’ ”

The effort was enough to finish second behind Keen Ice, with Frosted relegated to third.

Following the loss, the Zayats ques-tioned their decision to continue racing the horse, and participation in the Breeders’ Cup Classic in Lexington, Ky., at the end of October grew hazy.

A win for Pharoah in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, which has no age limit for entries, would mark the first occasion for a victor in the newly created Grand Slam of Racing, started well after racing saw its last Triple Crown winner. With a purse of $5 million, the Breeders’ Cup Classic is the richest and perhaps most prestigious horse race in the United States.

“My dad’s initial reaction after the horse lost was to say, ‘He’s tired. Why put him through this? He’s done so much for us; we should just retire him and let him live a happy life,’ ” said Justin.

Team Baffert and the Zayats decided to give it a bit of time and see how Pharoah came out of the Travers. It would take three weeks before Pharoah started putting in the works to convince Baffert the horse was ready.

“I didn’t make a hotel reservation until two weeks before the Breeders’ Cup. I didn’t get my flight. I waited. He was moving well but was just a little dull. I wasn’t going to put him back on that plane unless he brought his


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Beyond the noisy celebration of horse sports in the mainstream there were quieter reverberations across the racing industry attributed to the Triple Crown win.

The Zayats donated a percentage of all money earned by Pharoah to New Vocations Racehorse Adoption Program and supported the Thoroughbred Charities of America by hosting a fundraiser where the connections spoke about their Triple Crown experience. Bob and Jill Baffert donated $50,000 to the Permanently Disabled Jockey Fund, $50,000 to the California Retirement Management Account for retired race horses, $50,000 to the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance, and another $50,000 to Old Friends Farm, a race horse retirement facility in Georgetown, Ky. Jockey Victor Espinoza donated his entire purse from the Belmont Stakes to the City of Hope Cancer Center.

Donna Barton Brothers sits on the advisory board of the Backside Learning Center at Churchill Downs, which provides educational opportunities and other resources to backside workers. “We have our annual fundraiser for the center in the fall of every year,” she said. “We raised an extra $9,000 this year that we can attribute directly to paraphernalia from the Triple Crown winner. Also, our attendance was up at the event, which I think was directly related to a piqued interest in horse racing. We went from raising $32,000 last year—which was a record for us —to raising $52,000 this year, and I think a lot of that can be attributed to American Pharoah.”

Ripple EffectA-game. And if he had his A-game I knew it wouldn’t matter who else was in the race,” Baffert said with a laugh.

And bring his A-game he did, devas-tating the field with a 6 ½-length romp.

“I just loved watching that part of the story unfold,” said Justin. “I called Bob the ‘Master at Work.’ He is a bril-liant trainer. He really lets the horse tell him, and he was not ready to commit to going to the Breeders’ Cup until he saw him putting in those impressive works again. He was not going to race him for Pharoah’s reputation and for the sport. It was a credit to Bob and his whole team; they did a tremendous job of keeping him on his A-game his whole career. Victor did a great job. They had great chemistry together, and the whole thing just worked.”

He paused thoughtfully, then added, “I am just so happy he got to retire under his own power, his own will, a happy and healthy horse. He went out with a bang. No better way you could go out and end your career, so that was the fairytale ending for all of us.”

These public moments were stupen-dous for all involved, but for Justin, the quieter moments are equally vivid.

“I was with him at the barn before Belmont. I talked to him and looked him in the eye, and he gave me this reassuring look like, ‘Don’t worry. I got this,’ ” Justin recalled with a laugh.

Back in Bromont on that same Belmont Stakes Saturday in June, O’Connor knew he had it too.

“Everybody exploded! In this group, all being horsemen, we all knew when he won it. He came around the turn, and it looked like he might be fading a bit, but then he picked up and still had maybe a half mile to go, but he had it. He just had it, and everybody recognized that moment in our group,” he said. “Everybody saw it at the same time and started screaming.”

It was quieter in Wofford’s press trailer. “We were all stunned for a second there, that a horse had actu-ally done it,” he said. “Coming around the top you thought, ‘He’s going to fade. It’s too hard, three races in so few weeks, it’s too tough on the modern Thoroughbred,’ and then? He just opened up. American Pharoah was designed to do this for us.”

OVERALL HORSE

american pharoah · equine athletes and horse culture into the national dialogue and mainstream...

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