Encyclopedia > Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing

  Article Content

Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing

The Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing (Triple Crown for short, but the term is also used in other sports, and thus the full name should be used when it could cause confusion) consists of three races for three-year-old thoroughbred horses. Winning all three of these thoroughbred horse races is considered the greatest accomplishment of a thoroughbred racehorse.

In England, where the term Triple Crown originated with West Australian[?]'s three wins in 1853, it is made up of:

  1. the Two Thousand Guineas Stakes at Newmarket Heath, Newmarket, Suffolk;
  2. the Epsom Derby at Epsom Downs, Epsom, Surrey;
  3. the St. Leger Stakes at Town Moor, Doncaster, Yorkshire.

In the nearly 200 years that these races have been run, only 15 horses have ever won the English Triple Crown, including the great Nijinsky II.

In the United States, in 1930, Gallant Fox[?] won all three important races, and sportswriter[?] Charles Hatton[?] brought the phrase into American usage. The United States Triple Crown is made up of:

  1. the Kentucky Derby, at Churchill Downs[?] in Louisville, Kentucky;
  2. the Preakness Stakes, at Pimlico Racetrack[?] in Baltimore, Maryland;
  3. the Belmont Stakes, at Belmont Park[?] in Elmont[?], New York.

In the more-than-125-year history of the U.S. events, only eleven horses have ever won the U.S. Triple Crown, the most famous of which is Secretariat.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Northampton, Suffolk County, New York

... versus $30,956 for females. The per capita income for the town is $23,660. 9.0% of the population and 6.6% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total people ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 36.7 ms