American Triple Crown notion

[steward]

IIRC, the standard version for crediting the application of the phrase "Triple Crown" to the American big three classics mentions 1930 or thereabouts as the approximate time of origin; around the emergence of Gallant Fox.

Just for amusement, I put "Triple Crown" in the Kentuckiana DRF searchable database. There were a lot of hits before 1930 generated, most of them dealing with the British TC (coverage of British racing was fairly decent in the big American dailies even just after the Civil War, given the limitations of the times). The idea of applying British terminology to the American scene was hardly new, since Derbies and Oaks were common around the country by the time the '30s rolled around.

Anyway, I found several articles that proposed applying "TC" to various combinations of American races. Here is one from 1923 that is very concrete regarding the present modern combination, although in small case letters. The author presumed a consensus that the Preakness, KD, and Belmont were THE "big three" classics at that point in history. Personally, I think it pushes back the official story a little further back in time.

http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/pageview ... assterms=1

I don't have the distraction time available to keep on the DRF hunt. Here's the starting point for more DRF search engine fun:

http://kdl.kyvl.org/drf/

[steward]

The wikipedia entry for the American TC sent me to this link, where a different publication mentioned it at the identical time given in my first post. More than one sportswriter besides the DRF columnist used it. Were they talking together?

http://therail.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/0 ... ple-crown/

The Times first used “triple crown” to describe the Derby, Preakness, and Belmont in 1923 at a time when Hatton was at most 17 years old. The Times wrote in a year where the Preakness preceded the Derby, “Thomas J. Healey had Walter J. Salmon’s Preakness winner, Vigil, and his owner wired today that he would be here” — in Louisville, Ky. — “Friday to see his colt try to capture his second classic in the triple crown of the American turf.”

[steward]

I do not have a link available, but the June 10, 1923 NY Evening Telegram also contained a definitive reference to "TC." The reporter's byline was Peter Bernaugh, and it was in the last paragraph of a story about Zev's recent Belmont win.

"Like Man o' War, which fattened his winnings with the Preakness and the Belmont, Zev won two of the richest three-year-old events of the year, the Derby and the Belmont. Man o' War did not start in the Derby. Zev was Preakness starter, but ran a very dull race and finished eleventh. The record of Sir Barton, therefore, stands alone as an American 'Triple Crown' winner, he having captured all three of these events."

It doesn't get more specific than that. It seems that, by 1923 (at least), the racing media members in New York discussed the phrase among themselves and applied it in the manner that we do today. In addition, any attribution to Charles Hatton as an originator is obviously in error. He still might be fairly characterized as a later popularizer of something that his writer fraternity used commonly before him, but not anything more.