June 08, 2015
American Pharoah won the Triple Crown on Saturday, getting around the oval at Belmont Park as one of the fastest horses in history.
Only five horses have run the 1 ½-mile track faster than American Pharaoh.
"In 1973, there’s reason to believe Big Red would have beaten American Pharoah by twice the distance that Pharoah beat Saturday’s runner-up, Frosted,” Geoff Foster wrote.
Among Triple Crown winners, American Pharoah was faster than legendary Triple Crown winners such as the speedy Seattle Slew in 1973 and Affirmed in 1978.
But nowhere near as fast as Secretariat in 1973, according to a comparison by the Wall Street Journal sports blog, The Daily Fix.
"In 1973,
there’s reason to believe Big Red would have beaten American Pharoah by twice
the distance that Pharoah beat Saturday’s runner-up, Frosted,” Geoff Foster
wrote.
Secretariat, who won the Belmont by a record-breaking 31 lengths, was more than 2.6 seconds faster than Pharoah, Foster said.
“To put that number in perspective, that’s roughly the difference between Pharoah and the fifth-place finisher on Saturday, Frammento, who finished nearly 14 lengths out, according to Trakus, a system that charts horses’ speed and distance using GPS technology."
Read the full The Daily Fix post here.
