The museum’s homage to Pharoah opened in May to a record crowd of 1,200 (four-to-five times the usual attendance), who heard Ahmed Zayat, trainer Bob Baffert and jockey Victor Espinoza chat about all things American Pharoah.
AMERICAN PHARAOH RACES FULL
“The tour is a full day of everything horseracing,” says David Nichols, Mint Julep Tours’ head of marketing. Then in a van with a knowledgeable guide, you visit Coolmore America’s 5,000-acre, gorgeously manicured Ashford Stud farm in Versailles, where the Triple Crown winner stands for $200,000 per breeding and greets his human public, usually five days a week, with the grace of a seasoned diplomat. This all-inclusive tour travels to the Derby Museum to view the new American Pharoah exhibit and includes a walking tour of the track’s highlights and lunch at its café. If you haven’t already met the equine superstar, a great way to do that is on the “American Pharoah: A Champions Tour,” an experience created through a partnership between the museum, Louisville-based Mint Julep Tours, and Lexington-based Horse Country Inc., a booking agent that connects its member farms and clinics with tour companies and individual visitors looking for equine experiences. “His accomplishment has brought a renewed interest in racing.” “People were thirsty for a Triple Crown winner,” says Patrick Armstrong, president of the Kentucky Derby Museum at Churchill Downs.
Even folks who bet against the champ joined in the joyful noise, ecstatic that he hadn’t suffered the same fate as had 11 horses prior, including California Chrome in 2014, who’d won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness but faltered in the Belmont. Owners Ahmed and son Justin Zayat agreed that the crowd’s roar was so loud when their horse crossed the finish line that you couldn’t hear the person next to you and that they’d never before heard the Belmont racegoers so vocal. In 2015, however, American Pharoah pranced onto the scene and decidedly captured all three races, leading wire-to-wire in the Preakness and Belmont. Rumors again flew, this time that the Triple Crown was too difficult and should somehow be changed. But an equine superstar would not emerge for another 37 years. Rumors emerged that the Triple Crown might be getting too easy. Assuming another stellar runner would win that triad within the next few years, the Thoroughbred industry was riding high. After winning the 2015 Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Belmont Stakes and Breeders’ Cup races, Thoroughbred racing’s first ever “Grand Slam,” American Pharoah now stands at Ashford Stud.īack in the 1970s when working as an exercise rider, I watched three Thoroughbreds win racing’s Triple Crown within a five-year span: Secretariat in 1973, with track records in all three races and a Belmont Stakes win by an astounding 31 lengths, followed in 1977 by Seattle Slew and by Affirmed the next year.