A Celebration of Racing, Minus the Pharoah-Tale Ending

Saratoga Race Course was packed Saturday for the Travers Stakes and a chance to see Triple Crown winner American Pharoah. The outcome was not what most expected, but the day proved an unforgettable celebration of horse racing. (All photos by Eclipse Sportswire, unless otherwise noted)
There were 18,000 people here Friday morning to watch this horse work out. Early in the morning, too. Way before Saratoga Race Course even opened. On a weekday. And not even to watch the horse race, by God. They merely wanted to watch him gently gallop along the racetrack, to be in his presence for a minute, to touch the hem of his garment.
All day long, it’s all anyone around the racetrack talked about.
“Never seen anything like it.”
“More people than came to see Cigar.”
“They don’t get 15,000 at Belmont in a whole week - for racing!”
It’s true, the size of the crowd that came to see American Pharoah exercise was unbelievable. It was a sign that something special was happening around this horse and with this sport.

Photo by Penelope P. Miller/America's Best Racing
For so many years, we asked the racing gods for a Triple Crown winner. We were sure that our fields were fallow because of something bad we must have done. Perhaps we were being punished because someone fixed a race or used Willie Shoemaker’s name in vain. Whatever our sins, they must have gotten worse as we went from watching Charismatic just get beat to watching Big Brown pulled up or Barbaro’s tragic Preakness. It was getting worse, we thought. So much so that each time a horse would get close, we took to saying, “nope, never going to happen.”
We lost our faith.
American Pharoah stirred something up within the fans of this sport. He won the Triple Crown in front of 90,000 people in New York and millions more on television sets around the world. We finally broke the curse. A horse accomplished the impossible. He must be a special horse, indeed. How wonderful to be alive to see him race. Perhaps, by virtue of just being here to see it, we are special, too. We have a chance to atone for all the sins that came before us. Together, with this special horse, we can make horse racing special again.
Minutes after winning the Belmont Stakes, American Pharoah’s trainer, Bob Baffert, and owner, Ahmed Zayat, came to the rail of their box above the fans on the apron to wave and receive their applause. The crowd cheered, “thank you!”
“Travers, Bob!” a man shouted up to the owner’s box. “Travers!”
Zayat’s decision to keep racing American Pharoah through the rest of the year was celebrated by racing fans around the world. Everyone assumed the safe play was to put the horse on the shelf after he accomplished the impossible. Send him to stud and rake in the cash. Zayat wanted to give the fans more of this horse. It was more than just business to him.
Zayat is a fan, after all. And American Pharoah is more than just a stud. He is a racehorse. Racehorses go to Saratoga Springs, N.Y. American Pharoah would run in the Travers Stakes.
There were only 50,000 fans at the track on this Travers day because the attendance had been capped in anticipation of an impossibly large crowd. They came out to see the champion, who had already raced once since the Belmont and made short work of the field in the Haskell Invitational Stakes down at the Jersey Shore. With each race, the horse’s fan base was growing, and the legend grew, too. This race, the Travers, would presumably be the horse’s final prep before the Breeder’s Cup Classic at Keeneland Race Course, where he would take on older horses for the first time and, if the prophecies were true, cement his place in history as one of the greatest (maybe the greatest?) racehorses of all time. And we would all get to see it happen. And we would be made better and whole.

Many horses would challenge him here at the Spa. He had many more horses to beat than any of the three other Triple Crown winners who dared to compete in the Travers. The only one of those to win, Whirlaway, only had to beat two other horses. American Pharoah would face off against nine. If the toteboard was any indication, nobody doubted him. He was odds-on from the jump.
I couldn’t help but wonder who made up these crowds that came to see American Pharoah race. Were they new fans drawn in to this unusual and dwindling sport by the excitement of a historic triumph? Or were they merely lapsed fans that used to follow the sport, back in the day, but had grown weary of it through hard times? Or, perhaps they were something in between — people who had a passing interest in horses and racing and gambling, who had been to the track a few times and enjoyed it, had always watched the Kentucky Derby on television, and now suddenly were jolted into a day at the races given the chance to witness something they could tell their grandchildren about?

Perhaps they were all of these people and more. The big question was, would they stay? Would they keep coming back? I’ve often believed that horse racing was a sport that one must experience up close and personal. There is no substitute for a day at the races. Watching horse racing on television is no comparison. I wondered,  when they eventually put American Pharoah on the shelf, will these folks still come to the races? Will they cheer for a lesser horse the way they cheer for this one? Will they celebrate racing even when it isn’t supernatural?
The fans crowded out onto the apron for the big race. They stood on every available surface, hung from the rails above, children sat on men’s shoulders, a sea of phones and cameras were held aloft. When his name was called in the post parade the fans cheered wildly. “There he is!”

When the horses broke from the starting gate there was another roar of approval as they thundered by the grandstand, American Pharoah, as usual, up front. It wasn’t until the very top of the stretch, when Pharaoh lost his lead to Frosted, that anyone considered what it might feel like if American Pharoah lost.
That brief moment at the top of the stretch was palpable. Fifty-thousand stomachs turning, 50,000 hearts sinking. “Oh no!” But American Pharoah would not let us down. He dug deep, found his racing spirit, and moved foward in the stretch to reclaim his lead from Frosted and charge forward toward the finish line. The fans went crazy. What a performance! What an incredible — no! What is happening? On the outside, a horse was closing fast. It was hard to see who through the sea of arms and heads and cameras everywhere, but it was most certainly not American Pharoah. People screamed in horror. Literally screamed. A horse named Keen Ice had beaten American Pharoah. A horse that had only won one race … a maiden race almost a year ago. If one was to believe the wisdom of the gambling markets, this was a horse with a 1-in-16 chance of beating American Pharoah, odds which five minutes ago seemed generous.

Stunned. Fans who barely knew each other turned to one another and asked, “what happened?”
Sure, there were more than a few who cheered. There was no small number of American Pharoah fans who put their money on other horses just in case, this writer among them. For those who staked their hopes on Keen Ice, some could barely contain their excitement at the hundreds of dollars they would reap. For the rest of us, it felt like all the wind in the world was sucked away in those final strides. This is not what we came here for. We came to see history. We came to see a legendary racehorse win a storied horse race. We were all supposed to do this thing together. And now, it’s all screwed up.
A woman called her father on her cellphone near the rail. “Dad?” she says, her voice warbling. “He lost.”
A father and son wearing matching jerseys shuffle away from the rail toward the backyard holding hands. The boy, maybe seven years old, asked, “why did he lose?” “You can’t win every race, mi hijo.” the father replied.

A young man took a photo of his girlfriend, both dressed to the nines. She held up her losing ticket and frowned. He clicked the photo and they laughed about it, then looked at the picture together on the phone and it hit them. “It’s so sad,” she said. “Want to take another one?” he asked her. She considered it for a second and then said, “no, this is good. It IS sad.”
But then this happened. The winner of the 2015 Travers Stakes, Keen Ice, son of the great Curlin, came back out on the track after having his photo taken, draped in a blanket of more than a thousand carnations. He looked wet, tired, but proud. The groom took hold of the bit and led him out onto the stretch to parade before the crowd. And they rose to their feet and applauded him. A giant cheer spread across the racecourse. They call his name. “Keen Ice!”
The groom took the blanket of flowers off of the horse and plucked bulbs from it and tossed them into the crowd. People raced forward to catch them. He handed one to each of three young girls, who leaned over the rail. One was wearing an American Pharoah pin. She puts her nose in the flower to smell it. She waved at the racehorse and said, “thank you.”