American Pharoah vs. Secretariat: Who would win in a race?

Ever wonder how American Pharoah’s Belmont Stakes run ranks next to Secretariat’s? Well be curious no longer.

The Internet, amiright? Like, sometimes you just have these questions, man, and it just opens the vault to your mind and answers whatever you need. Like Aladdin rubbing the lamp: you want it, you got it. Who would win in a fight: Ghandi or a tree? What is the square root of minus Garfield? If cats could play the keyboard, what song would they play? It’s all there, man.

And now we have this feat of beauty: a side-by-side video of American Pharoah’s Belmont Stakes run alongside Secretariat’s historic gallop in 1973. Who wasn’t sitting there on Sunday, after all the dust had settled and sponsor-heavy interviews had concluded, mentally comparing the two horses? Thanks to the Wall Street Journal we now can move the images from our minds onto the screen.

With any historical comparison, there’s more to the hypothetical matchup than a simple side-by-side. In this case: pacing, track conditions, weather and post position all come into play. Secretariat looks like the more dominant horse on tape (he was one of the 50 greatest athletes of the 20th century, after all), but without them racing the track at the same time we’ll never know who would win.

And yet, that’s the fun of sports. Brady or Montana? Jordan or LeBron? Pharoah or Secretariat? Watch the greats accomplish mesmerizing feats in real time, then compare them against the ghosts of the past forever and ever and ever. One more debate to hit the taverns and message boards with.

(Humble blogger’s take: until Pharoah stops getting squiggly red lines under his name whenever it’s typed into WordPress, Secretariat takes it – gotta join the lexicon, ya dig.)

[WSJ]

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