Affirmed (6) and Steve Cauthen vs. Alydar (3) and Jorge Velasquez in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Track, Baltimore, MD on May 20, 1978. (Jerry Cooke/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)

“Affirmed is greater than Secretariat, or any Triple Crown winner, because only Affirmed had to face Alydar.” — Hall of Fame trainer Laz Barrera

Horse racing’s greatest rivalry ended 47 years ago today — and fittingly, it concluded in bitter controversy.

Lean, graceful Affirmed, winner of the 1978 Triple Crown, was winding down his season as a three-year-old at the Travers Stakes in Saratoga. So was Alydar, the big chestnut colt whose ferocious closing speed made him a constant threat to chase down competitors. Approaching the far turn, the two grand horses galloped to the front of the pack, with heavy underdog Shake Shake Shake sandwiched between them.

What looked to be shaping up as a thrilling two-horse finish was only interrupted when Affirmed swerved left into Alydar’s path, causing him to check up to avoid the rail, lose pace and drop back. Yet, somehow, Alydar recovered to nearly catch Affirmed down the backstretch, losing by just 1¾ lengths at the line. After the race, officials reviewed the result and disqualified Affirmed, awarding victory to Alydar. The scene after was filled with confusion and acrimony — between trainers, jockeys, fans, bettors and (who knows?) perhaps even the horses who’d almost tragically collided on track.

Alydar and Affirmed would never meet in a race again.

But in a way, there could have been no other ending to this fierce rivalry. The ‘78 Travers was the 10th and final head-to-head matchup featuring the two horses, the last chapter in a long-running saga shaped by generational talents, repeated duels and a cultural clash between Alydar’s blueblood Kentucky thoroughbred breeders and Affirmed’s upstart Floridian stable led by a Cuban-born trainer.

Almost every matchup between the two horses was decided by fractions of a length, and 9 of the 10 contests involved the horses finishing 1-2 in some order (usually with Affirmed first):

The great rivals in any sport are often intertwined, their résumés practically written in tandem. But few fit that description more than Affirmed and Alydar — whose legacies were as inseparable measuring sticks, each defining the other’s greatness by proximity.

Of course, as much as sportswriters have tended to anthropomorphize racehorses over the years — especially in an earlier age, when the Sport of Kings still ruled — it’s unclear exactly what drives intense rivalries between them. Horses have strong memories and a high degree of social intelligence, including the ability to recognize and and remember other horses. They also engage in complex social hierarchies with dominant stallions taking a leadership role within the herd. So there may be something about the presence of a particular rival that brings out a horse’s more competitive instincts.

Whatever the cause, Alydar clearly brought out the best in Affirmed throughout 1978, and vice-versa.

The former was actually supposed to be the better bet to win Triple Crown races, given his size, strength, speed and pedigree from storied Calumet Farm, which had previously produced Kentucky Derby winners Whirlaway (1941), Pensive (1944), Citation (1948), Ponder (1949), Hill Gail (1952), Iron Liege (1957), Tim Tam (1958) and Forward Pass (1968), with Whirlaway and Citation claiming the Triple Crown. Alydar had won five times with four more runner-up finishes in 10 races as a two-year old in 1977, and though Affirmed rattled off seven wins in nine appearances, Alydar’s three-race win streak leading up to the 1978 Kentucky Derby had him set as a 6-to-5 favorite before the race.

That Derby showcased both horses’ preferred styles — Affirmed, under the guidance of teenage jockey Steve Cauthen, charging near the front and staying there most of the race, while the closer Alydar, patiently held back by Jorge Velasquez, stalked near the tail end of the field before making his move in the final two furlongs and slicing into Affirmed’s lead.

But despite Alydar’s speed in the final stretch, Affirmed held on to win the Run for the Roses by 1½ lengths in an upset. It would be the largest gap between the two horses that Triple Crown season.

Two weeks later, the pair would reconvene in Baltimore for the Preakness Stakes, this time with Affirmed as a 1-to-2 favorite. At Pimlico, Affirmed gained the lead even earlier, again running up front all race. And again, Alydar waited to make a charge — this time, from a closer position relative to his rival with under a half-mile left to run.

The two stallions found themselves side-by-side down the stretch, far from the pack, matching each other stride for stride. Normally, the closing speed of Alydar would have been too much for a frontrunning horse to resist, but Affirmed gained speed in unison, holding off Alydar’s chase yet again by just the span of a neck.

The final leg of the Triple Crown took the horses to Belmont Park — and perhaps the greatest challenge yet for Affirmed. His pace-setting style had been able to hold off a late-charging Alydar over the shorter distances of Churchill Downs (10 furlongs) and Pimlico (9.5 furlongs), but at 12 furlongs (or 1 1⁄2 miles) the question was whether the smaller horse could stand up to the demands of the track, and his rival, for the entire race.

What followed was arguably the greatest horse race in history. Once again, Affirmed went to the front right away — and this time, Alydar challenged him on the outside as they moved through the backstretch. The two were side-by-side after a half-mile, and the rest of the pack completely receded — as though Affirmed and Alydar were the only horses on the track.

Neck-and-neck they went like that for the entire rest of the race, a sustained mile of side-by-side racing through the final turns, down the home stretch and up to the wire. Each horse gave everything they had; Alydar led coming out of the last turn, but Affirmed somehow found one last burst at the end to win the Triple Crown by a nose over his rival at the finish.

“Been around racing 50 years,” said Hall of Fame trainer Woody Stephens to Sports Illustrated in the wake of the race, “and I’ve seen dawn come up over a lot of tracks. People will tell you about the great races between Citation and Noor out in California in the early 1950s, and the race between Ridan and Jaipur in the Travers at Saratoga in 1962. Great races. But Affirmed and Alydar in the Belmont? Probably the best horse race that’s ever been run.”

“I’ll look at it again and again anytime I’m fortunate enough to get the chance. I’ll raise a glass to ’em while I’m watchin’ the replays and, damn, I’ll root—come on Affirmed, come on Alydar. Come on Cauthen, come on Velasquez. Whatever it is that these two horses have cannot be bought or manufactured. It’s the greatest act horse racing has ever had. I hope it never ends.”

The statistics confirm what Stephens and everyone else present that day felt: It was the most thrilling end to the greatest Triple Crown rivalry the sport had ever seen. Among cases where one horse either swept the Triple Crown or won at least two of three races, it was one of just four times when the same pair of horses went 1-2 in every race:

Among those, or even a slightly less strict filter — all cases where the two top rivals had a combined average finish of 2.0 or better between them — the average margin between Affirmed and Allydar, 0.6 lengths (or slightly more than 2 necks’ distance) across all three races was the closest in history:

Only Real Quiet versus Victory Gallop in 1998 — itself an unbelievable Belmont finish, with a late kick by Victory Gallop denying Real Quiet the first Triple Crown since Affirmed (of all horses) by a nose in a photo finish — was also under a length in margin on average.

You may notice that, in all of these super-close Triple Crown battles, the rival horse either wins one race for itself, or finishes lower than No. 2 in one of the battles. What remains unique about Alydar, though, is that he is the only horse ever to finish as runner-up in all three Triple Crown races.

Along those lines, here are the best performances in a single Triple Crown season since 1930 (the year of Gallant Fox’s win) by a horse who didn’t actually capture any of the races, according the Triple Crown Challenge point system — which (in its initial format) awarded 5 points for 1st place, 3 points for 2nd and 1 point for 3rd:

In any other year, against just about any other crop of horses, Alydar might have won the Triple Crown himself — or, at the very least, taken one of the three biggest trophies on offer. But in defeat, Alydar achieved a different kind of immortality. Circular as it might sound, his aggressive tests solidified Affirmed’s status as one of history’s greatest racehorses, and the ability to run with Affirmed nearly stride-for-stride also solidified Alydar’s status as one of the greats.

Again, the two great horses are inseparably etched into history together: You can’t mention one without the other.

The Affirmed-Alydar story didn’t fully end that August day at Saratoga. Alydar fans will point to his superior breeding record, for instance: His bloodline included Easy Goer (who denied Sunday Silence a Triple Crown in 1989 after a very Alydar-like loss in the Preakness), Alysheba, Strike the Gold and other major winners, while Affirmed sired only a few somewhat notable racers — none as good as Alydar’s offspring. But while Affirmed lived out his days in relative quiet, Alydar met an unthinkably heartbreaking end that quite possibly involved his being murdered for insurance money at the once-storied Calumet Farm.

(Horse racing, as always, remains a nasty business despite the beauty and majesty of the horses themselves in full stride. And the death of Alydar was a particularly dark day for the sport.)

A few years before that, though, an aging Affirmed and Alydar were actually stablemates at Calumet. It had been a dozen years since their mythic clashes in the Triple Crown and the incident at Saratoga. But the spark of the rivalry still stirred somewhere deep inside the two majestic animals.

“When the two chestnut-colored horses were out in their paddocks, they would stare at each other, their manes flicking in the breeze,” Skip Hollandsworth wrote in 2001. “Occasionally, Affirmed would start running on his side of the fence, and Alydar would take off after him on the other side. Even then, twelve years after their races, they remained competitors.”

And in the minds of fans and journalists alike, that’s where they will always remain, galloping side-by-side down the home stretch of eternity.

Filed under: Horse Racing, History