I'm always amazed that Real Quiet's run at the Triple Crown is so overlooked. He won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, only to lose the Belmont to Victory Gallop by a photo finish. He's easily the closest near-Triple Crown winner.

I have to agree about Real Quiet. If you watch the race he digs back in once he sees Victory Gallop.

With due respect to Point Given, who was definitely the best of the 3 yrs old in his year, anyone that that actually watched the Derby the year Risen Star lost would know he shouldn't have. The racing Gods were against him that day. Point Given just ran poorly that day, fast pace aside, his stablemate held third and he disappeared.

Another was Damascus that lost to a very ordinary Proud Clarion on a muddy track. Since I think Dr. Fager was the /best/fastest horse ever lived and Damascus beat him,  he would also rank as one of the best racehorses ever, but on a muddy day he just didn't show up.

Spectacular Bid is the clear choice here and really should have won the Triple Crown. The safety pin issue will always be a mystery, but Ronnie Franklin panicked in the Belmont and moved way too early.

Nothing against Real Quiet, but he fouled Victory Gallop not once, but twice down the stretch in the Belmont. Victory Gallop had his number that day and was the better horse.

Where is Afleet Alex?!?!  He was 1 length short of a Triple Crown as well.  A better trip in the Derby and he had it.

What about Afleet Alex? He had a rough trip in Derby and went on to win the final two legs of Triple Crown! Easily!

I'll second that.  What about Afleet Alex.  He was fast, he had stamina, but most importantly, he was game and that is one thing  a horse either is or isn't.  You can't train a horse to be game.  You can condition and drill them to improve speed and stamina, but if he ain't born game, he'll never get to the top.  Webster should put that picture of Alex falling and then winning beside the word game.

 Great topic, Jason. This brings back memories of Belmont Park in '78, watching from the third floor stands as Affirmed and Alydar duel down that long stretch.

 The following year, "the Bid" brought an even higher sense of expectation around the track, because everyone knew he was, indeed, a superhorse. That was the problem. As raceday approached, both Buddy and Ronnie were bragging about how they would break Secretariat's Belmont records. Not about winning the race and the triple crown.

  I believe Ronnie rode per instructions, Delp came up with the safety-pin excuse after the fact to save face for blowing  Bid's chance at immortality.

I second (or third) the Afleet Alex issue who is missing only because he lost the Derby before crushing his rivals in the next two.

My vote goes to Bid.

I fourth the Afleet Alex omission. His performance in the Preakness was outstanding and he blew the competition away in the Belmont. I voted for Real Quiet because I remember the agony of that photo finish. The waiting and then the letdown. With the others you knew at the wire it was over, at least with Real Quiet you had another few minutes of hoping.

I almost agree with the afleet alex crowd but, the one most compelling thing to me is that with the tv coverage that smarty was there until the jock with a half mile to go hit the accelerator and asked the horse for more than necessary down the stretch which allowed a one pace, one distance horse to eventually to catch him. several of the other examples show the danger of running blinkers to the detremint of the horse who has grit. anyway the trainers ,breeders, owners and jocks have really given us a lot of thrills.

I'm not sure who performed worse in the Derby...Point Given or Gary Stevens.  The horse had a great trainer, a tremedous prep, and a horrible Derby ride.  Gary later took blame as he should have.

If anyone leaves Smarty Jones off their list, they either don't know horses and horse racing, or they are blind.

I sixth or seventh or whatever the count is for Afleet Alex.  I'm not sure I would have picked him for my number one, but I would have liked to have had the choice!

I will always remember his Preakness - not so much for his amazing recovery, though it was amazing - but for the moment that came before it.  When Jeremy Rose turned Afleet Alex loose on the final turn, that horse just exploded!  It was breath-taking!  What a fun horse!

Empire Maker??  A dominant force that just wasn't right that day....

With all due respect to the other  horses in this poll, this is a no-brainer: Spectacular Bid. His career speaks for itself.

I respect all the horses given marked above. My horse, who is not often mentioned, is the great Swale who if I am correct was the last horse in the past thirty plus years who won the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes. I was at the 1984 Preakness and what a disappointment to see him not win. Afleet Alex should have been a Triple Crown winner. I like Jeremy Rose as a jockey but if he kept Afleet Alex on a straight path at the end of the race instead of moving slightly to the dead rail, we have a Triple Crown winner.

Had Alysheba been able to use Lasix in New York he would have picked up the Triple Crown.  He was bred to run all day and on Lasix would easily handle both Bet Twice (who knocked him to his knees in the Derby only to have Alysheba track him down) and later Ferdinand.  He got cheated by Belmont.

I'm with all of you who noted the omission of Afleet Alex, he would have been the Triple Crown winner we all wait for. Apparently this is a list only of horses who won the first two legs. Afleet Alex has my vote.

I'm not going to challenge Spetacular Bid but Sundy Silence and Smary Jones over SilverCharm is hard to believe. denied the triple crown at Belmont by one of the best jockey moves of all time by Chris McCarron. Just check the list of all time earners and you'll find Silver Charm near the top. Not better than Spetacular bid but certainly head and shoulders above the rest.

Hands, down, The Bid. No other horse is even close.

How you can compare any of these to Curlin at this point is rediculas

The only reason Spectacular Bid lost the Belmont Stakes is because his jockey was a complete numbskull.  Ronnie Franklin cost The Bid the crown and everybody knows it.  If Bill Shoemaker had been riding him he'd be in the books as the 11th Triple Crown winner right now. Clearly, when you put a jockey on a horse they have no business being on, bad things will happen and a very bad thing happended that day because of Ronnie Franklin,  The great Spectacular Bid was denied a Triple Crown because of his incompetence. It still makes me seeth 29 years later that they could have put this joke of a jockey on this great horse. Spectacular Bid was awesome and I would have loved to see how Ghostzapper would stand up to him, well wait a minute, Ghostzapper would never be able to stand up to a horse like The Bid because Ghostzapper needed, what, 6 months between races. Ghostzapper would have only been able to race against him once, and after running against The Bid he would have needed like 2 years before he could race again. That's what considered a great race horse these days. Pathetic. And someone will breed a mare to him for $200,000 so they can get a horse that will run maybe, what, say twice a year and pass on those inferior soundness qualities. So a grandson to Ghostzapper will run perhaps  once a year if their inferior soundness breeding allows them.

I saw all of these horses race in person, and while the Bid was indeed spectacular, Smarty should and would have won the crown if the other riders had not decided to team-tag him all away around the track. It was a shocking thing to behold from the grandstand, and while much discussed since then, I've always wondered why the owners of the horses who were sent after Smarty instead of being ridden to win didn't protest.  

All very good comments. Thanks for the poll. Bid wins this match up. Afleet Alex and Point Given could also have won this. Point Given showed up and won virtually every important race in his career outside of the Derby. Losing the first leg still counts as a TC near miss doesn't it? Point Given and Afleet Alex definitely merit consideration in this.

AFLEET ALEX HOW HE DIDNT WIN THE DERBY STILL AMAZES ME. GIACAMO PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK. LUCKIEST HORSE TO WIN DERBY OF ALL TIME

I say it's Sunday Silence by a nose over the 'Bid' simply because 'Silence' not only beat a great rival in Easy Goer 3 out of four, and a stellar cast of older horses as something Spectacular Bid failed to do (see the 1979 JC Gold Cup)as according to Barrera alluding to 'Bid' after the '79 JC gold Cup, "he got the weight (advantage), the Shoe and got beat"! 'Nuff said.

There are certainly a lot of great ones that fell short of the Triple Crown, but Bid is apart from all of them.  He is likely one of the top 5 all-time anyway, and that Belmont is the only thing that keeps many from arguing he may have been the best.

I can tell you, in one simple answer, why those two jockeys teamed up against Smarty Jones in Belmont Stakes, it is because they were jealous that Stewart Elliot would become the jockey of the 12th Triple Crown winner and not them. They wanted to be riding the Triple Crown winner. In horseracing, it's all about jealousy, plain and simple. Also, the only reason Marylou Whitney & Nick Zito entered Birdstone in the Belmont was because they were jealous and wanted to do their part to ruin any chance of Smarty winning. If Birdstone was really a classic contender he would not have skipped the Preakness. This happens all the time, it's sickening the amount of raw jealousy floating around in this sport. I believe it was Jerry Baily on Edington and Gary Stevens on Rock Hard Ten. TRUST ME, there was no way  Jerry Baily and Gary Stevens were going to allow a nobody like Steward Elliot to get what they SO BADLY wanted in their careers, a triple crown winner. As far as Marylou Whitney goes, Birdstone's owner, she is another jealous individual of anyone who has something her wealthy family doesn't. I'll tell you one thing though, the Whitney's will never breed anything good enough to win a derby. Remember her comments after Birdstone won the Belmont, they were and I quote "I'm sorry my horse won". She wasn't sorry about anything, she and Nick Zito accomplished exactly what they wanted to accomplish, make sure that Smarty horse doesn't win. Because Birdstone didn't win the 3 year old championship that, Smarty did, and if they were trying to win the top 3 year old award they would have run him in the Preakness. 

Affirmed and Spectacular Bid only raced against each other once, and of course, like all his races he needed the rail to win. He only beat The Bid like by a half length or something. One meeting decides who is best, I don't think so. But you can't deny the fact that he had to have that rail to win.  Take a look at the 1978 Travers Stakes and what they did to Alydar in a desparate attempt to get to that RAIL, they nearly killed him.  I wonder what would have happened if Affirmed had gone outside Alydar like he should have. He would not have won, that's what would have happened. Alydar clearly had the rail position in that race, take a look at the tape. It was a desperation move to push Alydar into the rail to get his needed position in order to win because he was unable to win races going around other horses, HE NEEDED THAT RAIL.

I loved Sunday Silence...saw him win the San Felipe and Santa Anita Derby over D Wayne Lukas' highly touted 2 million dollar Houston.  But what also sticks in my mind is Easy Goer's walk around Belmont (of course breeding wins this).  Had it been closer...Sunday Silence.  

If you look at the entire body of work, no other horse in this poll touches Spectacular Bid.

I have to go with Risen Star whose trainer didn`t realize the horse had a lot of natural speed. The next two legs were runaways when he was kept closer to the pace.

I saw 'Bid at Santa Anita win the 'Strub, and was the best horse I ever saw, and I saw Affirmed and Seattle Slew.....but Smarty Jones was a beast, certainly the best horse to not win "horse of year"---that went to the overated Ghostzapper and his soft Breeders Cup where Roses In May was content to finish second and they set a slow pace---but you can't go wrong with Spectacular Bid---he had it all....

On this Point I agree, however the question was who was the best horse to fall one leg short of the triple crown. Up to the Belmont I'd Argue Sunday Silence was every bit as good as the 'Bid.' Also 'Bid' had no great rival like Easy Goer to make it more interesting, unless you count Flying Paster, whom I believe to be an imitation of Run Dusty Run. Overall the Bid had a monster 4 yr. old season.

Although this discussion is about horses that raced in the Triple Crown, comments were made about Ghostzapper being "overrated," and having a "soft Breeders Cup." I'd like to respond to those comments.

When Smarty Jones wasn't voted Horse of the Year, I was at first disappointed; that is, until I learned more about Ghostzapper and watched his races. If Ghostzapper didn't deserve to be HOY, then in my opinion, no horse did.

In the 2004 Breeders' Cup Classic, Ghostzapper beat a previous Horse of the Year, a previous BC Classic/Dubai World Cup winner, a future DWC winner, and another horse that had earned $4 million. He won by 3 lengths in a record clocking of 1.59:02. Prior to the BC, he defeated the following year's BC Classic winner and eventual HOY, in the Woodward.

In his career, Ghostzapper had Beyer figures in the 120s four times. He was unbelievably fast, and could win at any distance from 6 furlongs to 1 1/4 miles. A truly brilliant racehorse.

On a cool windy day in Feb 1980, my brother and I went to Santa Anita to see 'The Bid vs three in the 'Strub....I watched Bud Delp and his horse as they walked to the saddling barn, Bud was in his loud plaid suit, he was classic, I saw greatness in the man, yes I did.....The Bid was rather leggy and not overly muscular, and when Flying Paster walked out of the saddling area to the vast, open walking ring of Santa Anita, there were "ohhs/ahhs" over his beautiful look---he was a very good horse----Valdez, the Travers winner, was a beautiful Chestnut trained by Laz Barrera (the GREAT Laz Barrera--- Relaunch, the big grey turfer was majestic----The Bid was rather ordinary looking to me----my brother and I were stationed at the "Clockers Corner", at the top of the SA stretch---they broke in front of us, as they ran by us, a guy yells "attaboy Eddie"---refering to Eddie D, as he gunned Relaunch into a suicide pace---Shoe took The Bid into the race early, making an amazing clubhouse turn move reminicent of Secretariat's Preakness----the fractions are like 1:32 with Bid in front and 'Paster coming---at the Clockers Corner you can see horses tiring on the turn--they lose their lean as they lose their strength----I'll never forget Spectacular Bid into a full lean on that turn, after those fractions, thats where I saw the greatness--in that fleeting moment, coming off the turn in full flight----GREATNESS! Everyone has their favorites, having seen him only that one time in person, I woundn't bet on any horse to beat Spectacular Bid!!!!

Silver Charm, in my book.  He never had the blowaway margins that some of the others had, but he was the most game, and when he was at his best, I'd take him over any of the others considered here.

Spectacular Bid, a "no doubt about it" answer. Timeform rated him #9 in the world for the 20th Century and #3 in the U.S. He went off at 1-20 eight times; was a champion at 2,3,&4; he set 8 track records; he set the world record for a 1 1/4 miles on dirt, which may still stand; he carried 130 lbs or more 5 times; he had the only Walkover in 60 years when nobody showed to race him in the Woodward; according to Shoemaker, he was the best he ever rode; numerous experts have named him the best they've ever seen. In short, he was the best horse by the meanest stallion in US racing history.

How about a poll on the best horse to finish last in the Derby?  

Afleet Alex?

Spectacular Bid in a runaway.  Alysheba and Sunday Silence in second and third.  Silver Charm fourth.

Jim, if you look at the Timeform ratings, the horses are very close. Sea-Bird tops the list with a rating of 145, followed by Secretariat at 144. Ribot was third, can't remember the fourth horse off-hand, but know it wasn't an American. My all-time favorite horse, the immortal Citation, is 5th overall with a 142, and "Big Cy's" damsire Hyperion might have been next. Spectacular Bid had a 141, so the numbers confuse me a little, because, as you said, he was ninth overall, and Citation was 5th at 142.

The great Sea-Bird raced only 8 times in his career, and won 7 of those. His win in the 1965 Prix de l' Arc de Triomphe was the most impressive single race performance I've ever seen. I didn't see the race live, but have watched it many times on the Internet.

I do take issue with the Timeform ratings however, because Man o'War was put too low, and I don't know where Kelso and Dr. Fager rank on it.

SPECTACULAR BID!!!  The big gray was the closest thing to a superhorse I've ever seen.  He beats them all...Alysheba, Smarty Jones, Sunday Silence and Point Given are the others in order of preference.

I Have to agree that Spectacular Bid was the best, But I also agree that Afleet Alex should be in there

I fully agree that Point Given was the best!  I watched him closely for every race.  But when the horses came out from the barn for the Kentucky Derby, I saw how distracted he was by the helicopters and banners and all the stuff in the sky that he hadn't had to contend with during races before.  That's where he lost the race.