Missing out on Triple Crown is the new tradition

People want lasting memories and they want to be present for the making of history or the long anticipated renewal of an interrupted tradition. The more than 100,000 who showed up at Belmont Park a year ago for the Belmont Stakes were not necessarily all fans of horse racing, but they came out because they didn't want to miss the promise of something very different.

Well, they all got a memory, and they were all there for history, and it was definitely a different day. Those fans were on hand for the day the Long Island Rail Road melted down and the roadways along the border of Queens and Nassau County became solid pipelines clogged by steel and chrome.

What they didn't get, of course, was the honor of witnessing the culmination of a Triple Crown season.

As the race ended at about 7 p.m., with Kentucky Derby and Preakness champion California Chrome nearly two lengths behind the winner, the disappointed crowd dispersed immediately. The fans overwhelmed the trackside railway station and, for those who drove, the massive parking lots disgorged their contents in a maddeningly slow trickle onto the Cross Island Expressway. There were race-goers who didn't reach Manhattan, either by train or by hastily dispatched shuttle bus, until 1 a.m., and residents of Queens who needed three hours to complete what is normally a 10-minute drive.

Many of them, God bless their intrepid souls, will be back at the scene of the crying again Saturday, hoping American Pharoah can succeed where 13 other Derby and Preakness winners have failed since the last Triple Crown winner in 1978. (Actually, 12 that ran and one scratch.)

The good people of the New York Racing Association can't guarantee a victory for the odds-on favorite, but they are doing what they can about the other memories. Ticket sales were capped at 90,000, with no sales at the track on race day, which is an unprecedented step for a business model predicated on the fact that the customers, once inside, will hand over money and usually won't have to be given anything in return. The LIRR has expanded the station so it can handle longer trains, and there is a postrace concert by the Goo Goo Dolls, a New York-bred band whose own career arc has lasted nearly as long as the Triple Crown drought. Organizers hope the concert will keep everyone, at least the middle-aged guys, from leaving at once.

Yes, it's hard to see what can go wrong this time - except, of course, that small matter of getting a very good, possibly great, horse through a 11/2-mile race ahead of seven capable rivals that have the benefit of far more rest. Saturday's Belmont will decide the difference between very good and great for Pharoah, a big bay colt that gutted it out at the end of a difficult Kentucky Derby and then romped nearly from gate to wire to win a muddy Preakness.

The Belmont will be different, as always. It is the longest race any of them will ever be asked to run and the sheer expanse of the racing oval - the largest track in the United States - can throw off their normal rhythms and also play havoc with the internal clocks that regulate the actions of the jockeys. Renowned turf writer Andrew Beyer believes half of the Triple Crown failures since Affirmed in 1978 were traceable to pilot error.

What is certain is that the breed is getting less and less able to run a steady Belmont from start to finish, so handicapping can only go so far. In the last 25 years, regardless of pace, the leader after one mile has won the race only three times. In the 25 years previous to that span, it happened 12 times.

This isn't a closer's race so much as a survivor's race. The winner isn't usually a horse with a great kick at the end, but a horse that can keep plowing along as the leaders are thrown into reverse. American Pharoah, which likes to run at the front as soon as possible, will be given that opportunity. There isn't much speed in the race and that's not the way to navigate the Belmont, anyway. In all likelihood, Pharoah will be on the lead at that mile pole. Then what will happen? Well, that's the question.

If he loses, it will be the distance and the grind of three long races in five weeks that beats him. There are a few other decent horses in the Belmont, particularly Frosted and Materiality, which gets distance breeding from sire Afleet Alex. But those others aren't in Pharoah's class, and none could hope to have a stride as efficient and elegant. Watching him run is like watching a perfect, smooth golf swing, or the sharp, seemingly effortless release of a tight football spiral. He's special.

Traditions are funny things, however, and nothing is ever really as it was, even if people would like to think that way. (The Belmont was run more than 50 times before it became a counter-clockwise race, for instance.) Triple Crown champions are exceedingly rare now because the game has changed. It is as if fences had gradually become 600 feet from home plate in baseball and everyone still hoped for home runs.

American Pharoah could hit one Saturday, though. He's playing in the biggest park of them all, but it could happen. If it does, people will cheer themselves silly and they might even forget for a few minutes to run like hell for the train.

@bobfordsports