Still, nothing like Affirmed-Alydar's Triple Crown duel

It was a legendary rivalry that has galloped through time without any yanking on the reins.

It was Bird-Magic, Ali-Frazier, Sampras-Agassi. Except, they could tell us about theirs.

Thirty years ago, Affirmed and Alydar glorified the three classic horse races that define their sport. When Affirmed beat Alydar by a length and a half in the Kentucky Derby, a neck in the Preakness and a head in the Belmont, sports fans thought they would never again see anything quite like it.

And they haven't.

Affirmed's 1978 Triple Crown was the most recent in a sport that covets many more. So it is nicely coincidental that the 30th anniversary of Affirmed and Alydar's stretch duel in the Belmont is also the time when the long drought seems most likely to end. Big Brown dominated the Kentucky Derby and Preakness and seems poised to do the same in Saturday's Belmont.

Still, even were Big Brown to turn in a Secretariat-like performance and win by 31 lengths, the saga of Affirmed and Alydar would not be diminished.

Both grand descendants of super sire Native Dancer, they raced 10 times. Affirmed won seven -- and one of his losses was by disqualification when he was judged to have cut off Alydar. Of the 10 races, only once did they not finish 1-2. By the time they met in the Kentucky Derby, with Alydar installed as the 6-5 favorite, they had already competed against each other six times, Affirmed winning four.

Patrice Wolfson, who with late husband, Lou, owned Affirmed, says now, "Horses were tougher back then."

Triple Crowns weren't.

Secretariat won his in 1973 with his unthinkable dominance in the Belmont. And the year before Affirmed and Alydar, Seattle Slew had won the three classics. After Affirmed, it was three in six years.

"It was starting to get a little easy," Wolfson says.

Instead, Affirmed's Triple has stood the test of time. As does the legend of Alydar, the only horse to finish second in all three classics.

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On the afternoon of June 10, 1978, Dale Austin was where he always was for the big horse races. A nationally known reporter for the Baltimore Sun and later the Racing Times, Austin was in the press box at Belmont Park for the third leg of the Triple Crown.

Austin is 75 and retired, but he calculates that he has seen more than 75,000 horse races.

None like what he was about to see.