Our Triple Crown and other numbers
by Bob Heyden
We are right smack in the middle of thoroughbreds’ Triple Crown season following a thrilling Derby. Our own Triple Crowns can only hope to be near this exciting, especially in light of recent trends.
Here’s a look:
1. A different colt has won each of the last 20 Pacing Triple Crown races. Only Stay Hungry (2018) has doubled up in nearly a decade. He won the Messenger and Cane Pace.
2. Wait, that was no fluke? Prior to Stay Hungry there were 21 different names next to the Jug, Cane, and Messenger trophies going all the way back to 2010. HOY Rock N Roll Heaven (2010) doubled up last just prior to Stay Hungry.
3. Has it really been 23 years since No Pan Intended won the very last Pacing Triple Crown in 2003?
4. The last three Hambletonian winners to also win the Yonkers Trot were the last three Triple Crown winners: Windsong’s Legacy (2004, at Hawthorne due to construction), Glidemaster (2006) and Marion Marauder (2016).
5. Three consecutive Hambletonian and Kentucky Futurity winners from 2007-09 passed on the Yonkers Trot and a realistic Triple Crown opportunity: Donato Hanover, Deweycheatumnhowe, and Muscle Hill.
6. The 2020 Messenger was canceled during COVID-19.
7. The last Pacing Triple Crown winner to also capture the Meadowlands Pace was Ralph Hanover in 1983. Since then, Western Dreamer was third in 1997, Blissful Hall was seventh in 1999, and No Pan Intended was fourth in 2003.
8. Cam Fella won the 1982 Cane and thus supplemented to and won the Messenger. But in those days, there was not a way to supplement to the Jug so he missed that party.
9. The Cane Pace is into its second decade at The Meadowlands but it’s clearly part of the Hambletonian “undercard.”
10. Finally, Seattle Slew and Affirmed did race against each other in 1978; Triple Crown winners in the same race. But we have to go back six decades when we actually had three Triple Crown winners 1-2-3 in the HOY balloting: Bret Hanover, Speedy Scot, and Ayres.
BY THE NUMBERS
• What do 14 3-7-1 and $1,065,282 mean? They are the combined 2025 records of both the Hambletonian winner Nordic Catcher S (5 3-1-0) and runner-up Maryland 9 0-6-1 on the season. Seventy per cent of their year’s take came on that one day. Nordic Catcher S did not race after the Hambletonian, with just five starts highlighted by an elimination win and then an all-time Hambletonian best 1:50 flat.
• This may be the best Su Mac Lad stat ever. He retired on 9/30/65 with a trotting industry best $885,095 at age 11. But he had not raced for six figures until that year, when he was third in the United Nations Trot with $100,000 on the table.
• Marcus Melander’s three division winners, Apex (2YOCT), Setyoursightshigh (2YOFT), and Super Chapter (3YOCT) in 2025 also led their age group in earnings. He doesn’t turn 34 until July 1.
• Scott Zeron turns 37 this month and is the youngest to win three Hambletonians by age 34 and the youngest to win any Pacing Triple Crown race, as he was just 23 in 2012 when he won with Michael’s Power in the Jug. He needed the fastest Jug opener ever, :25.2, to hold safely over a fella you probably heard of, Sweet Lou. Just 23 and driving a horse by a sire who was then 25, Camluck.
