Triple Crown + Travers
 

Whirlaway is the only horse in history to officially complete the sweep of these four classic 3-year-old events.

He gave the 2nd and 3rd place finishers 18lbs each in his Travers win and did it under 130lbs.

Affirmed finished 1st in the '78 Travers, but was DQ'd for fouling 2nd place finisher Alydar.

Whirlaway and Affirmed are also the only two Triple Crown winners to win Horse of the Year honors as 4-year-olds.

If I'll Have Another sweeps the Triple Crown -- I think the likelihood of him trying to win the Travers or coming back at age 4 will have everything to do with how much top offer is for him as a stallion.

Why did Secretariat pass up the Travers and run in the Whitney?

Whitney might have been a planned prep for the Travers like with Easy Goer maybe?

In fact, Secretariat was defeated in 3 races as a 3-year-old (Whitney, Woodward, and Wood Memorial) -- Easy Goer is the only horse to ever sweep those three races. He also won the Travers.

I know the meets were much shorter than. I remember the phrase "The August Place To Be". Never was sure of the reason. Always thought the Jim Dandy was the best prep timing wise...

Here is your answer...





Whitney was Aug 4th and Jim Dandy was Aug 8th.

A number of top three year-olds "prepped" for the Travers in the Whitney in the 1970-80s, when the meet was only 24 days (and horses didn't need four weeks between races). Alydar demolished a strong field in the 1978 Travers, and Java Gold won the 1987 Whitney over fellow 3YO Gulch.

The amount of weight carried was always one of the impressive things about Affirmed's Jim Dandy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6qUCO_bLns
Not exactly.

I think he meant this race:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0zYBc-Z7yo

That was no doubt what he meant, far more impressive.

Thanks. I did mean the '78 Whitney.

Only you could have found that. Was that "easy money" Onion took away from Secretariat. Lol Lucien. I always have heard rumors that Secretariat was fighting a virus the week of The Whitney. Some say the rail was dead.

Picked this up at a charity auction last year. Thought I'd share being the race in question. The other two weren't very good in comparison to be kind. Think one may have had 4 wins and the other only 1 going in, but may be off on this

Yeah -- the Travers prep for Whirlaway in the Saranac was a tougher race.

He gave War Relic 13lbs (130 VS 117lbs) and just got up to beat him by a nose going a mile.

Interesting info on War Relic at this link: http://www.pedigreequery.com/index.p...mall_font=1&l=

I think through sons of In Reality, War Relic is the only tail male line still going from Man O' War.

Here was a pretty good 3-year-old who almost pulled the sweep off:



* In 1931, Twenty Grand won the Kentucky Derby by 4 lengths in the final time of 2:01 4/5.

By comparison, the 2010 and 2011 Breeders Cup Classic were both run at Churchill Downs and went in slower times of 2:02 1/5th (Blame VS Zenyatta year) and 2:04.27 (Drosselmeyer year) I'll Have Another's Derby win was 2:01 4/5ths over a souped up track.

* In 1931, Twenty Grand won the Belmont by 10 lengths in the time of 2:29 3/5ths.

The 2011 Belmont was run in 2:30.88 and the 2010 Belmont was run in 2:31.57

His Travers win was only 2:04 3/5th. The last two Travers have been run in 2:03.03 and 2:03.28. However, he did come back two weeks later and beat Hall of Famer Sun Beau by 10 lengths. The week after that he won the Lawrence Realization at 13 furlongs, and a week after that won the Jockey Club Gold Cup at 2 miles.

The two 3yo races not shown in Twenty Grand's PP's above were the Wood Memorial (he won 1st off the layoff) and the Preakness (he finished 2nd)

Judging by all written accounts -- Twenty Grand was plenty best in the Preakness and should have been a Triple Crown winner.

Here is his Preakness chart:




Here is part of the Daily Racing Form write-up saying he encountered major trouble in two different spots:







Preakness winner Mate earned over $300,000 racing in the 1930's. The equivalent of almost $5 million today. Equipoise "The Chocolate Solider" finished 4th. He returned to win all of his next seven races and bank over $338,000 in earnings.

Twenty Grand was retired to stud but proved to be sterile. He had no offspring and was never quite the same when brought back.