Monday, June 8, 2015

Long Live the King!

Photo courtesy of Sara Fogan



It took 37 years, but on June 6, 2015 a bay colt named American Pharoah ran 1 ½ miles in 2 minutes 26.65 seconds to storm 5½-lenghts ahead of his competitors and become the twelfth Triple Crown champion. Cheers filled the land and a new subconscious mental script was written for fans of American Thoroughbred racing, everywhere.

I was beside myself cheering and screaming with excitement as I watched him gallop past the finish-line. While I never doubted or disbelieved what I was watching (history in the making), I still couldn’t quite process the racetrack announcer’s words when he declared: “He did it! American Pharoah has won the Triple Crown!” Not just the Belmont Stakes. The Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes. Even writing that sentence gives me goose-bumps because I had never seen a horse accomplish that before. I was too young and not yet interested in racing when Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed won their Triple Crown races, so I had no real idea what it meant to witness that kind of equine accomplishment. In fact, I didn’t really become interested in racing until 2002, right around the time that Seattle Slew died on the 25th anniversary of his winning the Kentucky Derby and Victor Espinoza rode War Emblem for the jockey’s first (unsuccessful) bid at American racing glory.

According to Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D.’s Theory of Mind, repetition of a behavior or a thought eventually becomes a known in the subconscious mind. Every time a professional sports pundit declared that it was highly unlikely for another horse to ever win the Triple Crown, this message was reinforced in the (collective) subconscious year after year and eventually became an established known. Eventually, the idea of a horse winning all three championship races to earn the Triple Crown became uncomfortable because the mere concept of such a champion actually existing—let alone our witnessing one win it—was so unfamiliar. It became more comfortable to just wish and hope for something for such a horse to come along without that dream actually coming true, because we would have no idea how to feel or react if it did.

But then it happened. Victor Espinoza galloped American Pharoah across the finish line and I (and millions of other viewers) actually witnessed a horse win it all. I understand that anyone who had seen one of the other eleven Triple Crown winners achieve this feat had a better idea what to expect. For me, as much as I wanted to see it happen again during my lifetime, this was a subconscious unknown. I had become so used to being acutely disappointed by the results of this race that my new-found joy felt, well kind of painful. Right away, I felt prickling of emotion in my chest and behind my eyes. I could barely speak, and it wasn’t just because my throat was sore after whooping and cheering so loud. Don’t get me wrong: I was excited, relieved happy—almost deliriously so—and something else that I couldn’t identify right away. It was a kind of pain or at least discomfort that comes with experiencing something unfamiliar and unknown: winning the big one.

Last year, when California Chrome crossed the finish line in fourth place instead of first, fans of American thoroughbred horse racing were reminded again that we must wait at least one more year for a horse to win the Triple Crown. The collective hopes and dreams shared by so many people that the big chestnut colt would end at least one drought in California turned to dust. However, now that it finally happened, it seemed like comparatively few people (at least, not enough people) were talking about or celebrating American Pharoah’s accomplishment. I couldn’t help but wonder, Was that it? Thirty-seven years of waiting, and that’s it? Where was all the fanfare? Where were the extended news coverage analyses about the race? As if to prove my point, several people I spoke to yesterday didn’t have any idea what the Triple Crown was or why it was important. Even the local television news channels stopped reporting about the race after Saturday night. It was already old news. Familiar. Time to move on.

But, at the end of the day I guess that’s okay. After all, life goes on and, consistent with Dr. Kappas’s theory, the presence of a living Triple Crown winner is now a subconscious “known” in horse-racing and social experience. If nothing else, American Pharoah and his owner Ahmed Zayat, trainer Bob Baffert and jockey Victor Espinoza will be forever associated American horse-racing’s Triple Crown. As I continue to rerun the memory of Saturday’s race and trophy ceremony, I feel confident that other fans of horses and horse-racing are also feeling excited and glad that a new champion has been crowned. 

         My belief that the pundits were wrong and that another horse could—would—capture that elusive crown one day proved true. I agree that running and winning three races on three different racetracks over a five-week period is an incredibly tough and daunting challenge. But, it is a challenge that has now been accomplished times before. A superb three-year-old colt proved once again, in terms of Kappasinian hypnotherapy, that the possibility of one horse winning all three races was a reality. He reinforced this fact as a known in our subconscious minds. As American Pharoah’s triumphs recently proved, if a behavior has been done before it can be accomplished again. It just took a very special horse (and jockey, trainer and owners) to get the job done.
               


Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
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