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| 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.
© 2015
