How many horses have won the English Triple Crown?
The English Triple Crown, of course, consists of three Classic races – namely the 2,000 Guineas, the Derby and the St. Leger – open to three-year-old colts and fillies and run, over increasing distances, on three different courses, between May and September each year. As such, the Triple Crown requires an elusive blend of speed and stamina that is rarely seen in modern thoroughbreds. In fact, since Nijinsky, trained by Vincent O’Brien and ridden by Lester Piggott, carried all before him in 1970, just three horses have completed the 2,000 Guineas – Derby double and just one of them, Camelot in 2012, tried and failed to win the St. Leger.
Notwithstanding the modern emphasis on speed rather than stamina, not to mention the temptation of the less arduous, but more lucrative, Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, run over the Derby distance of a mile and a half on the first Sunday in October, a total of 15 horses have won the English Triple Crown. However, while the St. Leger was established in 1776 and the Derby in 1780, the three Triple Crown races did not co-exist until the inauguration of the 2,000 Guineas in 1809.
Even so, it was not until 1853 that ‘The Wizard of the North’, John Scott, saddled West Australian to win all three races and the term ‘Triple Crown’ was coined. Between 1853 and the end of World War I – during which substitute races for the Derby and the St. Leger were run at Newmarket – a total of thirteen horses won the English Triple Crown. Thereafter, though, only the undefeated Bahram, owned by Sultan Mahomed Shah, Aga Khan III, in 1935 and the aforementioned Nijinsky, in 1970, have done so.