the Belmont)

Baffert: I will never forget the crowd noise.

July 24 (nine days before Pharoah’s return in the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park, N.J., and after a succession of strong workouts)

Layden: Horse never gets tired.

Baffert: Never. He looks incredible. Not an ounce of fat on him. Total stud.

Nov. 2 (two days after the Breeders’ Cup Classic, American Pharoah’s last race)

Baffert: I feel like I just won the Final Four and all my players graduated. I am never going to have another horse like this one.

Al Tielemans for Sports Illustrated

American Pharoah made an ancient sport modern and made old names relevant again. In the spring of 2015, racing was a niche sport surviving on the passion of a vertical audience and a few afternoons of appointment television that produced deceptivelyhigh ratings. There had been many fine racehorses since the great Triple Crown champions of the 1970s, but the cultural landscape of the U.S. has shifted so much that only a truly great horse could bridge (even temporarily) the gap between that niche and the masses.

There was a familiar rhythm to the racing season for 3-year-olds, which always seems to bring the sport to the brink of public adoption before falling short. Some horse would win the Kentucky Derby, and with that horse would come a story. The story would make us weep, and then we would weep some more when the horse won the Preakness, setting up a run at ending the long Triple Crown drought in the Belmont Stakes. But as the years passed and -horses