Justify, trained by Bob Baffert and ridden by Mike Smith, won it on Saturday. Justify had previously won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, so winning the Belmont gave him the Triple Crown.
He is the 2nd horse in the last 4 years to win it, after American Pharoah did it in 2015, and the 13th overall. His great-great-grandfather, Seattle Slew, did it in 1977. And Slew's father, Secretariat, did it in 1973. So that's one heck of a lineage.
Justify had won both the Derby and the Preakness on sloppy tracks, and I'm sure lots of people were saying that he wouldn't win the Belmont if the track was in good shape.
I'm starting to think the opposite may have been true: That if the first two tracks had been in good shape, he would have lost those races, but still won the Belmont. At any rate, he won all three, none was a fluke, and he is a true champion.
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The Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup on Thursday night. They overcame their past, 43 previous seasons with no Cup, many of them ending in nasty chokes; their greatest team nemesis, the Pittsburgh Penguins, something of a regional rival; and their greatest individual nemesis, Marc-Andre Fleury, the goaltender for 3 Cup-winning Penguin teams, now with the Vegas Golden Knights, whom the Caps beat 4 straight after dropping Game 1.
The Caps faced their demons, and beat them all. They faced a true test of champions, and passed with flying colors.
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The Golden State Warriors won the NBA Championship on Friday night. They are 1 win in 2016 short of 4 straight titles. This time, they needed hard-fought wins in Games 6 and 7 of the Western Conference Finals against the Houston Rockets, before they swept the Cleveland Cavaliers and their easily-quitting leader LeBron James in 4 straight.
It's one thing to show a lot of character. It's another thing to utterly dominate. The Warriors did one, then the other, to win the title. They passed a true test of champions.
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The Yankees, of course, are in Major League Baseball. A regular season of 162 games, plus a postseason where you have to win 11 out of a possible 19 games, is a true test of champions. As is England's Premier League: 38 games, one home and one away against each of the other 19 teams in the League.
A true test of champions is not supposed to be easy. Otherwise, it would not be a true test.
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