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Famous Racehorses: Seabiscuit Secretariat Smarty Jones & Others |
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• Assault 1946 Triple Crown Champion The story of Assault, with the breeding of a champion in his bloodlines, is one that epitomizes the heart and courage of race horse. By Bold Venture and out of Igual, he became the greatest of King Ranch's major stakes winners, completing a racing career that brought eighteen victories and total earnings of $674,720. • Benny's Dip Grabs The Glory In an eerie repeat of their running together in last month's Sandown Classic Trial, Benny The Dip and Silver Patriarch flashed over the line together at the finish of the first £1 million Vodafone Derby, at Epsom. As at Sandown, Benny The Dip held a narrow advantage, his short-head verdict yesterday, in a desperate finish, being achieved on the nod. • Book Review - Assault (Thoroughbred Legends) In the year that the Breeders' Cup came to the Lone Star State for the first time, sixth-generation Texan Eva Jolene Boyd set out to write a fitting tribute to Assault. Bred in south Texas at Robert Kleberg's King Ranch, the undersized horse dubbed the "Clubfooted Comet" swept the Triple Crown in 1946 for trainer Max Hirsch, who also hailed from Texas. • Maguire's Rollercoaster Ride Adrian Maguire was one of jump racing's greatest - and unluckiest - jockeys. Maguire had the rides on some of the top horses and duly obliged with victory in the King George VI Chase at Kempton (Barton Bank) and Cheltenham's Queen Mother Champion Chase (Viking Flagship). • A Classic Finish - Silver Patriarch and Benny the Dip Derby Day in 1997. The hot favourite Entrepreneur failed to reproduce his best form but the game and consistent Benny The Dip made his move early in the straight and apparently had the rest of the field beaten. Suddenly, Silver Patriarch, who had been almost struggling to keep pace earlier, began a storming run. • Affirmed vs. Alydar One of the greatest rivalries in racing history would have to be Affirmed and Alydar. They raced each other 10 times, from June 15, 1977, in the Youthful at Belmont, to August 19, 1978, in the Travers at Saratoga. Affirmed won seven of these matches including thrilling duels in all three Triple Crown races. • Road to the Triple Crown: Affirmed At the start of 1978, there had never been back-to-back Triple Crown winners and no horse had ever had to beat the same rival in all three races to earn the Triple Crown title. All that changed during the course of 1978, when Affirmed and Alydar provided the racing world with equal amounts of thrills and pathos. • Affirmed/Alydar was Racing's Greatest Rivalry From the time the two chestnuts raced neck-and-neck down the stretch in the 1978 Belmont Stakes, their names have been inexorably linked. Affirmed and Alydar. Anytime something is written about one, the other is inevitably woven into the story. Never in the annals of racing have two horses battled as frequently with so much at stake and so little separating them. • Thoroughbred Champions: Affirmed Affirmed will always be remembered by the people for his great winning resolve and his victories in the 1978 Triple Crown series. Surely he was one of the greats. But he was to meet his match later on in that year. In an extraordinary matchup, he met the great Seattle Slew, winner of the previous year's Triple Crown, in the 1978 Marlboro Cup. • AffirmedTribute.com Due to an overwhelming outpouring of affection and appreciation for AFFIRMED, Jonabell Farm felt compelled to devote a website to this magnificent Thoroughbred. The 1978 Triple Crown winner, Hall of Fame member, and two-time Horse of the Year spent the last several years of his stud career at Jonabell Farm prior to his death in January, 2001. |