by Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
As American Pharoah attempts to become the first horse to win the Triple Crown of Horse Racing since 1978 Saturday at the Belmont Stakes, it’s fun to look back at an interesting tennis connection to horse racing’s equivalent to the tennis Grand Slam.
I learned of this story last summer, while at an almost annual trip up to Saratoga Race Course in New York, the oldest sporting ground in the United States, where horse racing has been staged since 1863. These hallowed grounds have a Wimbledon-like charm that should be on every sports fans bucket list.
During the early morning tour of the backstretch area, where the horses warm up and are housed, the tour guide started to tell the story of a horse named Chris Evert.
Chris Evert was purchased in a yearling sale at Keeneland in Kentucky by a man named Carl Rosen, who owned a clothing manufacturing company Puritan Fashions Corp., and had recently signed as a client Chris Evert the tennis player, who was just starting as a professional tennis player.
At the age of three in 1974, Chris Evert won the horse racing Triple Crown for Fillys – the three biggest races for female horses – the Acorn Stakes, Mother Goose Stakes, and Coaching Club American Oaks.
Incidentally, 1974 was a good year for Chris Evert the tennis player as she earned the first two of her 18 major singles titles, winning the French Open and Wimbledon, beating Olga Morozova in both finals.
While Chris Evert the tennis player continued her Hall of Fame tennis career through 1989, Chris Evert the horse raced for only one more year before Rosen retired her to be a cornerstone of his horse breeding operations. Chris Evert the horse produced another winning horse with a tennis name “Wimbledon Star” but was also paired with perhaps the greatest horse of all time, the 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat, to produce a filly named “Six Crowns,” which is derived from the fact that both her parents won their respective triple crowns.
