US Triple Crown: I'll Have Another go at defying the odds

The site of The Jockey Club of North America reveals that an estimated 34,000 thoroughbred horses were foaled in the United States of America, Canada and Puerto Rico combined in 2009.

It seems a safe bet that connections of the vast majority of that 34,000 dreamt, at some stage, that their new arrival - all legs and no co-ordination at the time - would win a Triple Crown race or even the Triple Crown, of Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes, itself one day.

Racing thrives on such dreams: they are the oil that lubricates the whole mechanism.

Fast forwarding to June of 2012, and one horse of that 34,000 stands at the door of Triple Crown greatness, with just the final leg to go: a chestnut colt called I'll Have Another.

Triple Crown dreams might have been in the head of Harvey Clarke when he bred the once-raced Arch's Gal Edith to the unfashionable sire Flower Alley, but the market did not buy into those dreams in a meaningful way: the resultant offspring sold for 11,000 and 35,000 dollars as a yearling and as a two-year-old respectively.

The odds were stacked against I'll Have Another from the outset, in other words.

In another respect, I'll Have Another could be seen as a one-in-a-million individual. For, one million is roughly the number of thoroughbreds foaled in North America since the Triple Crown was last landed, by Affirmed in 1978.

The Triple Crown - won three times in the 1930s, four times in the 1940s and three times in the 1970s - is fast acquiring the reputation of being almost impossible to pull off.

The reality is that it should be nothing of the sort.

While the odds against any given individual winning the Triple Crown are huge, a Triple Crown winner from among those 30,000-plus foals each year should happen perhaps once a decade.

There will always be a winner of the first leg, the Kentucky Derby: we just don't know what that winner will be! So, the odds are in truth simply a compound of the unspecified winner of a Kentucky Derby following up in The Preakness (perhaps 5/2 against) and again in The Belmont (perhaps 7/4 against). That is a bit less than 9/1 in old money.

And plenty have had a good shot at it in the last 34 years. In that time, 11 horses have turned up for The Belmont with the first two Triple Crown legs in the bag. Four have finished second and four have finished third.

There has been misfortune along the way. Spectacular Bid in 1979 and Big Brown in 2008 both had ailments that seemed minor beforehand but which might well have taken the crucial edge off them. Alysheba in 1987 was unable to run on Lasix (banned in New York at the time) and managed only fourth.

There have been non-stayers - The Belmont takes place over a mile and a half, a marathon distance by US standards - notably War Emblem in 2002. And there have been respectable defeats against closely matched rivals.

Nonetheless, The Belmont now seems not so much "The Test of The Champion" (as it has been traditionally termed), but as a right old headscratcher.

The last four winners of The Belmont have gone off at double-figure odds, including 38.5/1 Da'Tara in Big Brown's year.

If you normalise the odds for field size and for takeout, The Belmont has been far and away the most unpredictable of the three legs in the last ten years, in terms of first-three placings and not just winners.

Indeed, you would have fared very nearly as well by pinsticking in the last decade as by following form where The Belmont is concerned. "Expect the unexpected" might almost be the race's byline these days.

I'll Have Another has defied the odds throughout his life. He has emerged from humble beginnings to lead a generation of thousands. He has shown superior ability and remarkable toughness already. He benefited from a suicidal ride on Bodemeister in The Kentucky Derby then beat that rival narrowly but strictly on merit in The Preakness.

He comes to The Belmont as pretty close to an even-money chance with few doubts surrounding him.

What he needs perhaps more than anything is fickle Lady Luck to remain on his side come June 9.

That is not too much to ask for, surely?!

Click HERE to visit the downloads area of timeform.com and get FREE Timeform Cards for the Brooklyn Handicap and the Belmont Stakes.