Alydar's 10-length win against older in the Whitney
 

Great video of a great 3-year-old:

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


Fellow 3-year-old Buckaroo (getting an 11 pound weight break from Alydar) was also 2nd in the race ... Buckaroo, was the sire of the freak Spend A Buck.

The older horses that year weren't much at all save Seattle Slew -- and the 3-year-old crop of '78 was one of the deepest ever.. but that was still very impressive.

Alydar's record as a 3-year-old was 10-7-3-0 ... his only 3 defeats all coming in the triple crown series races ... where each time he ran a number that would win said race more than maybe 90% of the time.

If Affirmed wasn't around that year -- you're looking at Alydar 10-for-10.

And finishing the year by winning the Preakness by 7.5 lengths, sweeping the Triple Crown in the Belmont by 13 lengths, winning the Arlington Classic by 13 lengths (giving signicant weight all around) winning the Whitney by 10 against the older horses, and winning the Travers by 3.75 lengths to cap a 10-for-10 season of still all huge figure performances.

J O Tobin, who beat Slew the previous year in the Swaps, was the second choice. I think he was coming off a win in the Tom Fool.

That was some performance by a great horse.

Ran on the wrong lead too.

Was always a big fan of Raise a Native's two monster sons, Alydar and Majestic Prince.

Nice to listen to a race without the sloberfest hyperbole from the track announcer proclaiming the greatness we all can see ourselves.

Here is a clip of Affirmed's tune-up for the '78 Travers ... winning the Jim Dandy under handicap conditions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZsmcF8xmMQ


Shame they don't have the whole race.

Another great thing about that clip, by the way, is the baseball score on the bottom.

Cleveland 22 New York 0.

Nice baseball score.

Reminds me a bit of AP Indy finding something to catch Treekster at SA.

Amazing race. Are you sure that race was under handicap conditions? I thought he had to give a lot of weight (14 pounds) under the race's allowance conditions.

Jorgie told me once that that was the biggest problem with the horse. He simply did not want to change leads. Still believed he would have won the TC if he could have got the horse to obey him.

You are correct --- I had assumed handicap conditions because of the spread ... talk about harsh alw conditons.

From the '78 ARM:


'78 wasn't exactly a great year for my father - in his brilliant training career. According to the ARM he was just 12-for-103 that year.

Of course - about half the old people who go to PID think he is my ghost writer or something.

Ha.

Now that is amusing.