AURORA — Clayton Dinmore is going to have to retire his lucky bow tie.
The 33-year-old from Denver was sporting the neckwear with gold and blue hues as he stood around a table at Arapahoe Park on Saturday, too nervous to sit as he stared at a big-screen TV. He had been in the same room when American Pharoah won this year’s Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May.
Dismore was wearing the tie then, just as he was three weeks later when he and a friend traveled to Baltimore and sat in the rain to watch live as American Pharoah captured the Preakness.
So when the same horse galloped into equine immortality Saturday, becoming the first thoroughbred in 37 years to win the Triple Crown, the tie no longer belonged to Dinmore.
“This is American Pharoah’s tie now,” he said.
Dinmore will certainly remember the tie. But he’s far from the only one who will remember what he was doing — or what he was wearing — when a sports event nearly four decades in the making unfolded.
Some were clustered around 10-inch TVs, squinting for a view at history. Others elbowed their way around a bar, beers spilling as American Pharoah stormed to the finish. The cheers rattled the grandstand like the thunder that shook Colorado last week.
“It actually happened!” one man yelled as he hurried to a mutuel window to cash a winning ticket after American Pharoah’s triumph in the 147th Belmont Stakes. “We actually saw a Triple Crown!”
Claire DeCamp knows a thing or two about the legend of the immortal horse racing trifecta. The Centennial resident worked as a publicist for Kate Chenery Tweedy, the daughter of Secretariat owner Penny Chenery, who wrote the book “Secretariat’s Meadow” that chronicled the history behind her mother’s legendary horse.
DeCamp knew Chenery, a Boulder resident who was on hand at Belmont Park in New York on Saturday, was thrilled to have another horse join the Triple Crown fraternity.
“Penny has great respect for anyone that loves horses,” DeCamp said. “We will never see another horse like Secretariat, but what American Pharoah did was amazing, and I know she loved seeing it. It was good for the people in thoroughbred racing, and there are a lot of good people in thoroughbred racing.”
Jonathan Horowitz, the 30-year-old Arapahoe Park track announcer, has been involved with horse racing since he was 14 and growing up in California. His was a lifetime up until Saturday, like those of so many others at the park, that had not included a Triple Crown winner. So even as the perfect game of horse racing unfolded in front of him on the TV in his booth, it was still a little hard to believe.
“All I had ever seen from Triple Crown wins was this grainy video, whether it was Secretariat (1973) or Affirmed (1978),” Horowitz said. “So when American Pharoah comes down the backstretch, you’re thinking, ‘Wow, this is really happening.’ “
Dinmore was still trying to make sense of what he had just seen several minutes after the race. He was almost too thrilled to check on his bets.
“You always hope something like this is going to happen in your lifetime,” he said. “It’s probably kind of what Cubs fans probably think about winning the World Series. You always hope you see some kind of greatness like this. To see it today is unbelievable.”
