One race, two minutes and one-and one-fourth miles of dirt. That's all that stood between Zenyatta and history.
One race. She was born and bred to race; it was in her blood. Her father, Street Cry, won the 2002 Dubai World Cup, and her mother, Vertigineux, won twice on the turf at Belmont. Before Saturday afternoon she had entered 19 races, taking the crown in all of them. She defeated all challengers and had already won the Breeder's Cup Classic once before. She was no stranger to the bright lights - she had been there before and all she needed was one more.
Two minutes. In less time than it takes for Virginia fans to leave a football game, the race would be over. One hundred and twenty seconds - that's all she would get. But that's OK; she had already run the same race before in mere milliseconds over two minutes. A simple repeat of her performance at last year's race was all she needed to finish her career undefeated and go down as the greatest filly of all time. Two minutes until the end of her career. Two minutes from immortality.
One and one-fourth miles of dirt. She had only run one race of that length in her career - last year's Breeder's Cup - and nine of her nineteen previous races had come on one and one-sixteenth mile tracks. Three-sixteenths of a mile may not seem like a lot, but for a horse it could be the difference between placing and finishing last. Look at how many horses have come up one leg short of the Triple Crown after having fallen at the Belmont Stakes - the longest race in the Triple Crown by one-quarter of a mile. Racehorses are trained to run a certain distance - to know how much to hold in reserve and when to make their move. The slightest change in distance can make all the difference, but she would have to overcome that. And sure, she was used to the artificial turf tracks in California, but to finish her career undefeated she would have had to conquer the Churchill Downs' dirt. She would have had to run on an uneven surface and deal with the loose dirt being thrown in her face. The final one and one-fourth miles of her career would be her most difficult.
When the gun went off, Zenyatta quickly fell to the back of the pack. That's OK, though - she made her career out of slow starts. She was famous for her late breaks
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