“Two horses changed my life. As a kid on our small farm in Illinois, we had a very gentle Morgan mare we named Patsy. She is the reason I love horses. On the racetrack, it was 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed. He is the reason I became a fan of horse racing.
Patsy was gentle but also very motherly. Once, on a trail ride with my brother, when her weaned filly foal was back on our farm, she dumped him and ran back to the farm several miles away.
With Affirmed, my fondest memory was seeing him, very late in life, at Jonabell Farm in Lexington, not long before he died in 2001. He was so majestic.
When I think of Affirmed, I remember two races. His Belmont Stakes, where he fought off Alydar to win the Triple Crown. I watched that on a small black and white TV at a bar across from Wrigley Field in Chicago, right after a Cubs game.
A year later, after I had moved to Southern California, I was at Hollywood Park when he won the Gold Cup, carrying 132 pounds, going the mile and a quarter in 1:58 2/5, under pressure the entire way from Sirlad. Amazing!”
By Ray Paulick, for Ontario Racing
(C) Ontario Racing 2016. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced without permission.
More For The Love of Racing