that they can be slapped down for the naiveté of their joy, one bay-colored colt with a sawed-off tail, fluffy plugs in his ears and a running action gifted by the gods, seized America’s heart on the first Saturday in May and held it tight until Halloween. At last, multiple generations came to understand why racehorses had once been among the most revered athletes on earth.

Andrew Hancock for Sports Illustrated

So much of American Pharoah’s story is familiar now and has deservedly become part of equine legend. There was his first public workout, at a training farm in Florida in March 2014, when he accelerated so quickly that he nearly tossed his female exercise rider off his back and then sprinted down the homestretch so fast that the silenceon the video was broken only by a lone voice saying, “Holy s---.” There was his first race, at Del Mar five months later, when Pharoah, the even-money favorite, was spooked by the noise, the heat, the crowd and the opposition and finished fifth. There were the fuzzy, tennis-ball-sized earplugs that were pushed into Pharoah’s ears before his second race (a victory) and that he wore in every race for the rest of his career.

And there were his triumphs, especially his gutty victory in the Kentucky Derby, in which he wore down Firing Line (who ran the race of his life) in the stretch despite the fact that Pharoah’s jockey, Victor Espinoza, said his horse was “empty” with three quarters of a mile to go. Two weeks later