American Pharoah! American Pharoah, Baby!

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Giving the world one more magical memory, Triple Crown winner American Pharoah provided a storybook ending to the first Breeders' Cup ever held at pastoral Keeneland Race Course, galloping into his retirement to stud with a 6 ½-length victory over longshot Effinex in Saturday's $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic.

"He gave everybody what they came to see today," trainer Bob Baffert said. "That's what horse racing is about. There was some great racing. We saw some really good horses run, that's the beauty of the Breeders' Cup. It's tough, it's tough to win. You better come with a good horse and you better be ready.

"I'm so proud of Pharoah, what he did today. Just watching him turn for home… I've never seen anything like him, never trained anything like him. He is a gift from God. I'm just glad the Pharoah goes out the champ that he is. It's going to be sad to see him go, but I think he's done enough. He's proved enough."

Baffert and owner-breeder Ahmed Zayat and their families watched the race from the walking ring of Keeneland's paddock, jumping up and down and screaming as American Pharoah cruised away from the competition through the stretch with little urging from jockey Victor Espinoza. Without seemingly exerting himself, he covered 1 ¼ miles in 2:00.07, easily a track record at a little-used distance at Keeneland.

It was the sixth track record in three days on Keeneland's year-old dirt track that replaced an eight-year experiment with Polytrack.

"What can you say? What a horse," Zayat said. "The kindest, friendliest, easiest most brilliant horse I've ever seen in my life. We owe American Pharoah everything.… This race was only about American Pharoah, we wanted him to go out as a winner, just for the horse. He's run so hard and brilliantly for a very long taxing time.… He runs with his heart. He's just a different kind of animal.

"I literally did not watch the final eighth. I closed my eyes, I knew he'd won and I got extremely emotional."]

American Pharoah, who had never faced older horses, raced unchallenged on the lead, a lethal situation his rivals feared once the champion mare Beholder was scratched on Thursday, leaving no other true speed horse to provide pressure.

The first horse to sweep the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont in 37 years loped through a quarter-mile in 23.99 seconds – fast for most horses trying to go wire to wire at 1 ¼ miles but not for a horse who can reel of 12-second eighth-miles all day. But Pharoah picked up the pace slightly, the second quarter-mile going in 23.51 and the third in 23.71 to have a two-length lead on Effinex.

"I knew it was going to be his last race and I was ready for it," Espinoza said. "I wanted to let him bounce out of there and (use) his high speed like he's always done. I don't want to take any chance. I don't want to take any one inch out of him in the race to let anybody get close to me.


"On the backside, he kind of slowed down a little bit and then I looked at the track and it was a little bit deep and I decided to move him just like maybe one or two paths out. As soon as I moved from that spot, he accelerated again. I was like wow. I was really excited. Turning for home I was not worried about the track. I was gone. I was trying to open it up as much as I can and I saw the wire maybe 20 yards out. For me, it couldn't come fast enough to cross that wire and get it over with."

American Pharoah strode home in quarter-miles of 24.26 and 24.60 as the crowd roared approval. Off at 7-10 odds, much of it no doubt $2 souvenir tickets, he paid $3.40 to win.

The victory came nine weeks after American Pharoah lost the Travers by three-quarters of a length, coming the day after he got overly excited while galloping before a Saratoga crowd estimated at 15,000 just to watch the Triple Crown winner train.

"I'm so proud of the horse, but (also) a sense of relief," Baffert said. "After that last race, I was really down on myself. I thought he was doing really well, enough to win that race and he was just a little flat. We had that extra time, got him ready. When he's right, you saw what he can do."

It was Baffert's second straight Classic, following the 3-year-old Bayern last year. His 12 Breeders' Cup victories rank second only to D. Wayne Lukas' 20.

The $26 million Breeders' Cup was played out on a cool and overcast day before a crowd of 50,155, a track record. They'll never forget being there to see the last race for American Pharoah before he heads to a stallion career at the international Coolmore conglomerate's nearby Ashford Stud, though there could be a possible side trip to Churchill Downs for a finale fan farewell.


American Pharoah, a son of WinStar Farm's stallion Pioneerof the Nile, concludes his career with nine victories in 11 starts, earning $8,650,300 with the $2.75 million payday. His 3-year-old season never included a home game, the colt flying out to compete at seven different tracks.

The Jimmy Jerkens-trained Effinex, with big-money rider Mike Smith up, went off at 32-1, the second-longest shot in a field reduced to eight with the scratches of Smooth Roller Saturday morning.

Effinex stayed closest to Pharoah throughout, with Tonalist and Frosted next in pursuit before giving way.

"I was so happy with the way he ran," Smith said. "He just ran brilliant. I knew of course American Pharoah would set the pace, but I thought I got to put myself close enough to give myself a shot. At the three-eighths pole when I saw that I couldn't match strides I thought, 'You know what? Don't panic, don't go with him, sit there and wait and try to get second' and we got it."

Smith, a Hall of Famer who has been around some truly great horses, said of Pharoah, "The real guy showed up today. He's a machine, just a brilliant horse. No words, at least in my vocabulary, does him justice. I thought I had him for a little bit there, and he just keep hitting gears."

Honor Code rallied from last,13 lengths back with a half-mile to go, to finish another 4 ½ lengths back in third under Javier Castellano.

"I thought he ran great," said trainer Shug McGaughey, a Lexington product. "There was no pace over a very fast racetrack and a very good horse won. I wasn't going to take him out of his running style, and he was the only one who closed… I think everybody was riding to be second, because nobody put any pressure on the winner. The race was over when they were going down the backside.

"… As a trainer, this is the first Triple Crown winner I've ever seen, and I think he is a very deserving Triple Crown winner. To see him come back and run the way he did, against this field of horses, my hat is off to him."

Churchill Downs-based Keen Ice, who in the Travers became the only horse to beat American Pharoah since the Triple Crown winner's first start, finished 1 ½ lengths behind Honor Code, nosing out Tonalist, Hard Aces and Frosted in the photo for fourth, with Irish invader Gleneagles last in his dirt debut.

American Pharoah: 12th Triple Crown Winner

ELMONT, N.Y. -- There he was parading about in the winner's circle, the world's greatest athlete, his muscles and veins bulging as if he were hooked up to some overheated generator about to explode.

American Pharoah was sweating profusely under a fading sun, huffing and puffing and flaring his nostrils for dramatic effect after conquering a mile-and-a-half test of character and will that had broken so many lesser horses before him.

The bay colt turned his head just so to shoot a bloodshot glance from his left eye at the unruly admirers fighting to take his picture. I was almost close enough to reach out and touch him, not that I would've ever dared. In the presence of greatness, I couldn't help but think this horse deserved to be written up on Steinbeck's laptop, or Hemingway's, and certainly not mine.

American Pharoah started his Saturday in an old barn with weary green-colored siding, hard by the Hempstead Turnpike and right across the street from a Wendy's. He took his prerace bath behind Barn 1 (with some oblivious motorists whizzing on by, honking at each other), accidentally stepped into the white bucket carrying the soapy water, and ultimately made the long walk toward the paddock and the monument to Secretariat, the ghost all Triple Crown hopefuls chase at the Belmont Stakes.

And then Victor Espinoza took him out of the gate and into the early lead, just like that. Suddenly, the 37 long years that had passed since a teenage wonder named Steve Cauthen guided Affirmed home became a closed chapter in a wildly entertaining -- if unfulfilling -- book. Years after Affirmed beat Alydar in three epic confrontations to win the last Triple Crown before Saturday's, Cauthen was reminded that only five horses ran at the Belmont.

"Actually," he said, "there were really only two."Actually, there was really only one on the Belmont track Saturday evening, not eight, and he treated this closing Long Island marathon as if it were a walk in Central Park. American Pharoah, the perfect horse with the imperfect spelling, made 90,000 witnesses sound like 900,000. He nearly flipped the building on its ear as he protected his lead around the massive oval and won by 5½ lengths, his triumph punctuated by the sight of Espinoza punching the air with a straight right hand.

As horse stories go, this wasn't Seabiscuit giving all underdogs a lift during the Great Depression, or Secretariat thrilling a nation haunted by Vietnam and Watergate. This was just a powerfully elegant animal, born on Groundhog Day, refusing to surrender to the inevitability of another Groundhog Day finish at the Belmont.

Thirteen horses had won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness since 1978, and 12 of them made it to the Belmont and failed to finish the job. War Emblem stumbled. Smarty Jones got a bum ride from his jockey. California Chrome was nicked out of the gate and beaten by a Preakness-skipping opponent, sending one of Chrome's co-owners on a nationally televised, amateur-hour rant. Funny Cide was swallowed whole by conditions so treacherous that one of his small-town owners later told ESPN.com that the Belmont should've been canceled, and that he should've scratched the horse when it wasn't.

You knew all the stories, all the names and faces of a drought started when the Derby and Preakness winner Spectacular Bid stepped on a safety pin the morning of the '79 Belmont. The drought began three years before David Letterman debuted as a late-night TV host, and survived his entire career.

American Pharoah wasn't ever going to contribute to one of those stories. The loser on California Chrome, Espinoza, entered 0-for-2 in Triple Crown chances, and the trainer, Bob Baffert, entered 0-for-3. Friday night, Baffert had dinner with his friend, Joe Torre, at Del Frisco's on Sixth Avenue, and the Hall of Fame manager who had won four World Series with the Yankees saw certainty in the trainer's body language and words.

"He was as cool as a cucumber, a lot cooler than I would've been before a Game 7," Torre said as he waited to join Baffert on the stage for the trophy presentation. "He knew this horse was something special from the get-go ... There really was no hesitation in how he was talking about this horse."

Torre had been fired three times as a manager before George Steinbrenner gave him his big break in the Bronx. He mentioned that the fourth time turned out to be the charm for his guy Baffert as well.

The trainer's three Triple Crown near misses, Torre said, "was sort of like getting to the World Series and never winning it. He can finally raise the trophy today."

Before climbing up to the stage, Torre admitted something that every great manager in every sport should admit. "You've got to have the right horses," he said. "Just like the time when I managed the Yankees -- I had the right horses."

Yes, mercifully, Saturday was about the horse instead of the humans. Baffert and Espinoza -- who grew up on a Mexican goat farm and became a teenage bus driver to help pay the bills -- were fascinating characters under the watch of their more fascinating owner, Ahmed Zayat, an Orthodox Jew who made his fortune selling beer in Egypt. Torre didn't need to point out that Zayat has a lot of Steinbrenner in him, defined by his blustery proclamations; emotional, quick-trigger decisions (he fired and rehired Baffert, his own Billy Martin); and dubious business associations.

In fact, after all the coverage of Zayat's high-stakes legal issues and bankruptcy case, and after all the printed claims that he was either slow to pay his debts or in the habit of never paying them at all, it seemed like he was the one about to run the race. So as security guards rushed him through a delirious mob, I barked a question at him about the magnitude of his moment in the sun.

"Forget about me," he shouted back. "I'm happy for this sport. It's all about the horse, a brilliant horse. Now he can find greatness. He was a good horse, and now he's a great horse. He's a legend. It's all about the horse."

After making the 25-mile trip from his Teaneck, New Jersey, home, the toughest bargainer out of Teaneck since that noted NBA tough guy, David Stern, had made the appropriate concession at the appropriate time. It was never about Zayat, or Baffert, or Espinoza, and when it was over all three were in complete agreement on that.

"He's the one who did it," Baffert said of his horse. "We were basically passengers."

And what an indelible ride it was. American Pharoah won the Derby by a length, and then blew away the field in the slop at the Preakness. On his prerace walk to Barn 1 at the Belmont, Baffert jokingly complained he didn't get the rain that he wanted and that some weathermen had predicted. He looked up toward the sunshiny skies and said, "Too late now."

But American Pharoah didn't need a muddy track, and he didn't need the kind of gut-check rival that pushed Affirmed the way Alydar did in 1978, back when Cauthen compared the two competitors to Ali and Frazier. All this beautiful horse needed, really, was for the human beings to get the hell out of his way.

American Pharoah was born to be the 12th winner of the Triple Crown. If you stood next to him in the winner's circle Saturday, and watched him flex his muscles and celebrate his tired, glorious self, you didn't need some weathered horse whisperer to tell you that.