Triple Crown winner: Count Fleet
Twelve horses have won the American Triple Crown – composed of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes – which was patterned after the English Triple Crown that dates to 1809. When Sir Barton won the three races in 1919, it was not considered a Triple Crown feat. The three races were not acknowledged as being tied together as the Triple Crown until the 1930s. The Thoroughbred Racing Associations commissioned Cartier to craft a Triple Crown trophy – with three sides representing the three jewels – in 1950, and the trophy retroactively was awarded to the eight previous winners of the three races. In 1973, Secretariat was the first horse to be awarded the trophy after he accomplished the sweep.
COUNT FLEET - 1943
Br. c., 1940, by Reigh Count—Quickly, by Haste
Owner-breeder: Mrs. John D. Hertz (Ky.)
Trainer: Don Cameron
Jockey: John Longden
Race record: 21 starts ages 2-3, 16 wins, 4 seconds, 1 third, $250,300.
At 2: Won Pimlico Futurity, Champagne, Walden, Wakefield.
At 3: Won Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Belmont, Withers, Wood Memorial.
The aptly named Count Fleet was one of the fastest horses of his day. As a 2-year-old, four days before the Futurity at Belmont Park, he was credited with a six-furlong workout on the Belmont straightaway in 1:08.20, significantly faster than the track record, and though he lost the Futurity, he won the one-mile Champagne in track-record time and equaled the track record in the Pimlico Futurity at 1 1/16 miles. He was owned Mrs. John D. Hertz, whose husband had stood his sire, Reigh Count, but bred him to only a few mares every year.
At 3, nothing got close to him. In the Kentucky Derby, he went to the lead and won by an easy three lengths. A week later in the Preakness, he missed the stakes record by two-fifths of a second in winning by eight lengths. Between the Preakness and the Belmont, he won the Withers in just a fifth off the stakes record. And in the Belmont, he galloped off to a 25-length victory in stakes-record time of 2:28.20, despite suffering a career-ending injury in the running.
Standing at Hertz’s Stoner Creek Stud in Kentucky, Count Fleet was a very good sire, getting 39 stakes winners and three champions, and was the leading sire in 1951. He sired consecutive Horses of the Year in Counterpoint in 1951 and One Count in 1952, and he sired the 1951 Kentucky Derby winner, Count Turf, and the champion 3-year-old filly, Kiss Me Kate. He died Dec. 3, 1973.