Triple crown season is here
by Bob Heyden
Tonight’s (June 27) Messenger Stakes and Yonkers Trot at Yonkers Raceway get the 2025 Triple Crowns underway. Let’s look at some history of these two classic races:
1. It has been 15 years since the Messenger winner also was named HOY. Rock N Roll Heaven, trained by Bruce Saunders, did it in 2010. Saunders is also in this year’s Messenger with Manolete from the rail at 9-2. Note: The 2020 HOY Tall Dark Stranger never got the chance at a Messenger victory as the race was called off during the COVID year along with the Yonkers Trot.
2. Ake Svanstedt has a “Trotting Triple Crown” of his own going on. He is the last trainer/driver to win each of the Trotting Triple Crown events. He won the Kentucky Futurity with Six Pack (2018), Hambletonian with Captain Corey (2021), and Yonkers Trot with Up Your Deo (2023).
Svanstedt will start from post 2 with Happy Jack B in this year’s abbreviated five-horse Yonkers Trot field.
3. Travis Alexander is trying to do what only Billy Haughton has accomplished, win the Messenger four times in a five-year span. Alexander won with American Courage (2021), Pleaseletmeknow (2022), and finished 1-2 last year with Sweet Beach Life over Howlenthehills. He’ll try to win his fourth this year from post 8 with elimination winner Odds On No Limit at 8-1 with driver Matt Kakaley looking for his third Messenger.
“My first year on my own was 2021 with American Courage,” Alexander said. “Back in 2000, when I worked for Joe Holloway, we won it with Ain’t No Stoppin’ Him.”
4. Billy Haughton had the most incredible Messenger bio of all, training and driving seven winners. He went 1-2 in the kickoff year of 1956 with Belle Acton over stablemate Bachelor Hanover. He went on a tear taking the 1967 edition with Romulus Hanover followed by Triple Crown winner Rum Customer. He yielded to fellow ‘Gold Duster’ Stanley Dancer from 1969-71, but then was back with a vengeance with Silent Majority (1972), Armbro Omaha (1974), Bret’s Champ (1975), and Windshield Wiper (1976).
5. Chris Ryder has two shots at this year’s Messenger trophy. He has World Of Wishes (post 2, 20-1) and Twisted Destiny (post 3, 5-2). In 1996, Ryder won his very first Triple Crown event, the Messenger with Go For Grins. Nine days after this year’s Triple Crown liftoff Ryder officially gets inducted into the Hall of Fame.
6. Tony Alagna is one of just four trainers to have won the Messenger three times in a four-year span: Revenge Shark (2015), Raing Hill (2016), and Stay Hungry (2018). This year he’s got post 6 with Banderas (12-1).
7. Scott Zeron has the rail looking for his first Messenger. Now 36, Zeron is tied with John Campbell for the most Triple Crown victories, nine, prior to their 35th birthday.
8. It’s been 43 years since a trainer/driver won the Messenger, and he did it via the supplemental route. In 1982 Pat Crowe won with Cam Fella. In the Little Brown Jug trainer/driver Chris Boring won in 1984 with Colt Forty Six and in the 1988 Cane Pace trainer/driver Yves Filion won with Runnymede Lobell.
9. From 1967-76, Stanley Dancer and Billy Haughton took down an incredible nine of 10 Messengers. The most dominant one decade stretch ever for any two drivers in any Triple Crown event.
UPDATE ON MARK MACDONALD
Driver Mark MacDonald was injured a week ago in an accident at Yonkers.
“I have a Grade 1 sprain in my wrist and a small fracture in a bone in my hand and general soreness,” MacDonald said, adding with a laugh, “I’m just a little beaten and bruised and I’m a little down but not out, not yet anyway. In just a few weeks I’ll be ready to roll again. A minor setback. It’s a long summer; I hope to be driving at Goshen on Hall of Fame weekend.”
