151st Kentucky Derby Miscellaneous

 At 31 years of age Silver Charm is still going strong at Old Friends in Kentucky.  He has been there for many years.   He is also the oldest living Kentucky Derby winner, having won in 1997.  

The race:

The horse who defeated him in the 1997 Belmont Stakes, denying him the Triple Crown, Touch Gold, is still alive and is also at Old Friends.

Snip:

Though Silver Charm led the Belmont with an eighth of a mile to go and looked poised to become the first Triple Crown winner in 19 years, Touch Gold accelerated past him in the last 75 yards to win by half a length. 

Now, Touch Gold lives one paddock over, where a romantic fan can at least imagine the two old rivals carrying on a decades-long argument about who was actually better.

Remarkably, they both still look robust and healthy, which is in no small part thanks to the detailed health care and nutritional support the horses receive at Old Friends. Even though Silver Charm is long past his athletic glory and his coat is much whiter than people remember from his racing days, he still makes a good impression and seems like a horse with plenty of life left in him.

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The morning line favorite  for this year's Kentucky Derby, my 65th is Journalism.

American Pharoah, who won this race on the way to the 2015 Triple Crown, has a son  in the race named Publisher.

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Last year, Steve Haskin wrote a piece for Secretariat.com analyzing and explaining why Secretariat's Belmont record will never be broken.

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Preakness 1990-1999

Summer Squall 1990:





Hansel 1991:






Pine Bluff 1992:







Prairie Bayou 1993. The 1993 series is especially tragic, for Union City broke down in this race and had to be put down. Even more heartbreaking was the winner's owners talked about how bad they felt for Union City's connections when they were in the winner's circle, but just three weeks later, Prairie Bayou broke down in the Belmont Stakes and had to be euthanized. He was a gelding. It was just tragic that year. I have a hard time watching this race and the 1993 Belmont:






Tobasco Cat 1994:






Timber Country 1995:




Louis Quatorze 1996:




Silver Charm 1997. This was one hell of a race, nearly a three-way tie, and from one of the better foal crops in recent years:






Real Quiet 1998:







Charismatic 1999:

Kentucky Derby 1990-1999

1999: Charismatic:



1998: Real Quiet:



1997: Silver Charm:



1996: Grindstone:



1995: Thunder Gulch:



1994: Go For Gin:



1993: Sea Hero:



1992: Lil E Tee:



1991: Strike the Gold:



1990: Unbridled:

Triple Crown.

There have been six near-misses of the Triple Crown in the past 11 years, to say nothing of the near-misses in 1979 (absolutely no excuse for Spectacular Bid's loss), 1981 (Pleasant Colony), 1987 (Alysheba), and 1989 (Sunday Silence).

The most heartbreaking, as I have mentioned, was Real Quiet's extremely narrow loss in 1998 to Touch Gold. It still makes trainer Bob Baffert and jockey Kent Desormeaux sick after all these years because it was so damned close. A bob of the head would have clinched the Triple Crown for Real Quiet.

I don't know why War Emblem wasn't mentioned in the article. He was one of the six near-misses.

Let's Take a Look

at some notable Belmont Stakes races:

The 1997 Belmont Stakes, with Bob Baffert-trained Silver Charm losing out to Touch Gold: