Who Will Win The Virtual Triple Crown Showdown?

Who was the greatest American Triple Crown winner of them all?

We love to get into a good ole fashioned discussion about the merits of our favourite horses; heck, that is what horse racing is all about.

The Kentucky Derby: Triple Crown Showdown is an animated race created by Inspired Entertainment Inc. using computer-generated imagery that features the 13 past Triple Crown winners in a 1 ¼-mile race at historic Churchill Downs.

The virtual race will be included in NBC’s broadcast of “The First Saturday In May: American Pharoah’s Run to the Triple Crown,” that airs Saturday (May 2) from 3-6 p.m. ET. The Kentucky Derby: Triple Crown Showdown will air in its entirety during the broadcast at approximately 5:45 p.m. ET.

You can wager on your favourite and the money will be donated to COVID-19 relief or you can play along without a donation. A grand prize of a Kentucky Derby experience will be given away. Visit the site here.

To determine the probability of each contender winning the race, select officials from Churchill Downs analyzed the historical past performance of each Triple Crown winner and incorporated the opinions of distinguished horse racing experts who evaluated each contender’s achievements and put them into historical perspective.

That information, known as the Fundamental Probabilities, was fed into Inspire Entertainment’s computer models which will determine the final result by using these probabilities in conjunction with random number generation.

The Fundamental Probabilities only determine the chances of each horse winning the race. Those with a higher probability value are not necessarily going to win the race, they just have a greater chance of doing so.

The legendary Secretariat, born 50 years ago this year, has been installed the 7 to 2 morning line favourite by oddsmaker Mike Battaglia.

So, how does one go about handicapping a 1 1/4 mile fantasy race of all the Triple Crown winners?

**(Note – I have handicapped the race based on the Triple Crown winners’ career performances)

Style and finishing time of the Triple Crown winners in their Derby wins (and other wins) should be taken into account, although it is hard to get a gauge on how fast earlier Derby winners ran as track surfaces were likely different than what they are today. Some TC winners ran their best races in the mud, others on fast tracks.

Many TC winners set track records in their victories and none were more demonstrative in speed and power than Secretariat who set track records in all three races and his 1:59 2/5 time for the Derby’s 1 1/4 miles still stands. Andy Beyer, whose successful Beyer Speed Figures are included in Daily Racing Form past performances, says he assigned a whopping 139 Beyer Figure to the colt’s Belmont Stakes win when he won by 31 lengths. The next highest Beyer Figures since then include the 129 earned by Ghostzapper in the Breeders’ Cup Classic in 2004. Recent TC winners American Pharoah and Justify, while totally dominating their class, rarely posted Beyer Figures higher than 105.

What about the size of the fields and the competition behind them?
It is fair to say it is a lot easier for a top horse to win a Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont when he faces a small field. It doesn’t necessarily mean the victories were not impressive or extremely fast (see Secretariat’s Belmont Stakes win) but post position and traffic can play a role in how the win was achieved.
Citation defeated 15 rivals in three Triple Crown races. Justify defeated 18 in his Derby victory alone.

Some very good horses finished behind the Triple Crown champs such as Sham, second to Secretariat in the Derby and Preakness and Sensitive Prince, who could not keep up to Affirmed and Alydar in their 1978 TC showdown but later won six major stakes races and set three track records.

In addition, the Thoroughbred breed is different today; speed genes are dominant thanks in part to the influx of Mr. Prospector blood and horses are not as sturdy or sound. Early TC winners raced a lot from a young age: Assault made 42 starts, Citation 45 and Whirlaway, 60. Justify, the 2018 TC winner raced six times in his career.

The two most recent Triple Crown winners, Justify and American Pharoah, had to be very good to win in big fields in the Derby and both colts possessed the valuable high cruising speed plus stamina to get away cleanly from the gate and stay close to the pace. Their running times and competition, however, paled in comparison to that of most of the early Crown winners.

With his breathtaking ‘sweep’ move, Secretariat simply has to be tabbed as the winner from post 3. He truly was one of the greatest racehorses of them all.

Citation won his TC in 1948 and it was a quarter of a century before Secretariat was able to take the series. ‘Big Cy’ was the first horse to earn a million dollars and he did it in a time when races rarely had purses over $100,000.

Seattle Slew was the first undefeated horse to win the TC and his waltz through his series was stunning. Somewhat of a high strung colt who could lose his cool in the pre-race warm-up, ‘Slew’ dominated racing as a two, three and four-year-old from 1976 to 1979.

Picks – 1 – SECRETARIAT; 2 – CITATION 3 – SEATTLE SLEW
Longshot – GALLANT FOX

Below are short videos of the TC winners with footage of their Derby wins and TC sweeps:

Sir Barton