NOT only is there Triple Crown talk in Europe, there is also Triple Crown talk Stateside.

It was a shame that Mendelssohn’s bid for Kentucky Derby glory was weakened by the weather and just about scuppered when he was hampered a couple of strides after he had left the starting stalls but Justify was impressive in winning the race.

Bob Baffert’s horse raced up with the fast pace under Mike Smith, but he kept on really strongly all the way to the line to win by two and a half lengths, disarming the curse of Apollo in the process.

There are many differences between the American Triple Crown and the British Triple Crown. Two obvious ones. Firstly, the final leg of the American version is run five weeks after the first leg, not four and a half months after it. And secondly, the longest leg is 500 metres longer than the shortest leg, two and a half furlongs, not six and a half furlongs.

SPECIAL

It doesn’t mean that it is easy to win the American Triple Crown and a certain type of horse is required to win three classics in the space of five weeks. There were three American Triple Crown winners in the 1970s, Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed but there wasn’t one after Affirmed until American Pharoah in 2015. Bob Baffert trained him too.