A Bit of Trivia
Matt Graves pointed out last week that Affirmed and Afleet Alex have something in common: both won the Sanford and Hopeful at Saratoga as two-year-olds. Reading Pete Axthelm’s “The Kid” last night, I spotted another parallel: The 1978 Triple Crown winner also had a shortened Derby prep season — just 45 days — and the first race of Affirmed’s three-year-old campaign was a sprint that he won easily. His second was a 1 1/16 in which he struggled to beat even lightly regarded rivals. Sounds familiar.
Related: Another thing the two horses had in common is that they both had talented young riders — Steve Cauthen was only 18 when he rode Affirmed to the Triple Crown. Afleet Alex was piloted by an only slightly older Jeremy Rose to five wins in his first seven career starts. Rose won’t have the chance to ride Alex in any of the Triple Crown races though because trainer Tim Ritchey replaced him with the more seasoned John Velazquez early this year. I won’t presume to second guess that decision, never having trained a horse for a rigorous three-year-old campaign, but must wonder how secure Velazquez’s commitment to Ritchey and Alex is when his agent, Angel Cordero, has to call Ritchey to assure him that Velazquez will show up for the mount in the Arkansas Derby on April 16. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
