Since Justify will try to do on Saturday what only one horse has done before, his attempt to become a Triple Crown winner while still unbeaten boasts an added layer of historical zest.Seattle Slew did it in 1977, when he made the 109th Belmont Stakes his ninth victory in nine starts. Winning the Triple Crown needs no embellishment, but reaching such heights while cultivating a perfect record always has set Slew apart.Others, though, have come very close.American Pharoah would have been an undefeated Triple Crown winner had he not lost his maiden race debut during the summer of 2014 at Del Mar. His Belmont romp made him 7 for 8.Native Dancer would have been an undefeated Triple Crown winner if he had not lost the 1953 Kentucky Derby by a shocking head. At that point, he’d already won his first 11 starts.And Affirmed would have been the most spectacular undefeated Triple Crown winner of them all after winning the 1978 Belmont Stakes, his 16th start, had it not been for the horse who beat him once, and then twice, the year before as 2-year-olds.Alydar was Affirmed’s dark doppelganger, the itch he could not scratch. Their rivalry transcended the sport and begged comparisons to the Celtics and Lakers, Nicklaus and Palmer, Notre Dame and USC. Forty years ago, culminating in a Belmont Stakes for the ages, Harbor View Farm’s Affirmed and Calumet Farm’s Alydar dominated the racing stage like no two horses before or since.The score ended up lopsided, seven decisions to three, but at no point was Affirmed allowed to let himself blink, lest Alydar steal the show. It happened in their second encounter, the 1977 Great American Stakes at Belmont Park, and then happened again in the Champagne later that season, when Alydar blew past a distracted Affirmed deep in the stretch.No one was surprised, therefore, that the 1978 Preakness came down to a neck and the Belmont was decided by a head. By then, the two red colts were as close as the fingers of a fist. Affirmed and Alydar had become the living embodiment of what the old-timer said when asked which gunfighter was faster:“I’d hate to have to live on the difference.”Even four decades on, it doesn’t take a phone call to launch Alydar’s retired trainer, John Veitch, into a fond reverie. The mahogany red chestnut put Veitch on the road to the Hall of Fame, while allowing the young horseman – he was 32 during the spring of 1978 – to apply many of the lessons learned at the knee of his Hall of Fame father, Sylvester Veitch. Those lessons were never more dramatically tapped than for the Belmont Stakes, when Veitch was convinced he had made the adjustments that would deny Affirmed and his effervescent Cuban trainer, Laz Barrera, the Triple Crown.“We decided we had to engage Affirmed quicker,” Veitch said this week, referring to the collaboration with his jockey, Jorge Velasquez. “I removed his blinkers to give him the opportunity to see Affirmed sooner and look him in the eye. I was searching for a change, and it almost worked.”Affirmed’s triumphant journey through the 1978 Triple Crown with Barrera and teen sensation Steve Cauthen at the helm is rightfully the main attraction of most reminiscences. It must be appreciated, however, that Alydar also had to recover after the Derby and then again after an even tougher Preakness in order to stand the gaff of the Belmont. As it turned out, Veitch had no worries on that score.“Alydar got better from the Derby to the Preakness to the Belmont,” the trainer said.The work pattern testified to Alydar’s durability. Ten days before the Belmont, run that year on June 10, Veitch worked Alydar the full mile and one-half of the race in 2:43.60. Four days later, he went three-quarters in 1:12.60, then on June 9 Alydar lit the fuse with a three-furlong blowout in 35 flat.“If a trainer did that today he’d be excoriated,” Veitch said. “But a really great athlete like Alydar needed to be trained hard to perform at his level.”If there was a chink in Alydar’s armor, it was the fact that he would never change lead legs, preferring to stick to his left.“That winter at Hialeah, I would take him back into the three-eighths chute and we would do figure-eights,” Veitch said, describing a graceful drill designed to encourage lead changes. “He looked like Baryshnikov, so pretty doing it. But when he ran, under the intensity of the race, he would never change leads.“I had seemingly hundreds of people call me up to make recommendations,” Veitch added with a laugh. “From changing his shoes, to putting his saddle on differently, or telling the jockey how to shift his weight. It made no difference.”But it does bear speculation. With a short head deciding the race, maybe a fresh lead would have changed history.“It’s impossible to know,” Veitch said. “What it came down to was that he was so comfortable with the way he ran. Alydar was Alydar.”And, except for the Triple Crown frustration, that was enough for Alydar’s legion of fans. With Affirmed elsewhere, Alydar won the Blue Grass by 13 lengths, the Arlington Classic by 13 lengths, and the Whitney, over older horses, by 10 lengths. The great rivalry ended unkindly, in a Travers marred by the disqualification of first-place Affirmed in favor of second-place Alydar. But even that could not erase the glowing memory of the 1978 Triple Crown.“The wonderful thing about the Alydar and Affirmed story, from 2-year-olds to 3-year-olds, was the people involved with both horses,” Veitch said. “There was never a word of animosity, only the greatest sportsmanship all around.”Still, Veitch took the loss hard. Calumet had not won a Belmont Stakes since Citation completed his Triple Crown in 1948 for Ben and Jimmy Jones, and it was a gift he badly wanted to give the farm’s matriarch, Lucille Markey.“After the Belmont I was disappointed,” Veitch said. “Crushed is a better word. I was walking through the grandstand tunnel, and there’s a guy leaning over the rail with a huge beer, calling out, ‘Hey, Veitch-o!’ I’d been in New York a long time, so I knew what the fans were like. Usually you’d just walk on by, but I was thinking, well, maybe he’s sympathetic.”So he paused, and the fan took the cue.“Hey, Veitch-o, you know what Alydar needs?”“No,” the trainer replied.“Barrera!”