Ten best Travers winners of the past 40 years

Saturday marks a personal milestone of sorts, as it will be the 40th time I will tune in to watch the Travers (G1). I wish it were more because I sure missed out on some good ones by a few years, but we can’t control when we’re born, can we?

In honor of this anniversary, I could have waxed poetic on my favorite Travers winner (Coronado’s Quest, 1998) or perhaps compiled a list of the most memorable Travers I’ve watched. But it seems more fitting to list who, in my opinion, have been its best winners from 1987 to the present, taking in the totality of their careers.

Here we go…

10. Street Sense, 2007

Although not an emphatic winner of the Travers over the relatively unheralded Grasshopper, Street Sense was an outstanding winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1) and Kentucky Derby (G1) in a loaded crop that included two-time Horse of the Year Curlin and Hard Spun. 

9. Sovereignty, 2025

The final chapters of his racing career have yet to be written, but his Horse of the Year campaign last season was near flawless, and his recent score in the Whitney (G1) was a return to form. How he fares in the upcoming Jockey Club Gold Cup (G1) and Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1) could move him up or down.

8. Medaglia d’Oro, 2002

One of two non-champions on this list, though I voted for him as best three-year-old. After duds in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness (G1), he never finished worse than second in his final 11 starts. And if not for head-scratching efforts from Volponi and Sarava, and freaks like Candy Ride and Pleasantly Perfect, he’d be in the Hall of Fame.

7. Point Given, 2001

His loss in the Kentucky Derby remains inexplicable because this physically imposing son of 1995 Travers winner Thunder Gulch showed up virtually every other time he set foot on the track. About as dominant a three-year-old as you will find in the record book, and it’s still unfortunate we didn’t get to see a showdown between him and Tiznow in the Breeders’ Cup.

6. Bernardini, 2006

Granted, he was able to coast through his brief career without having to contend with Barbaro at full strength. But there is something to be said about a colt whose five career stakes wins were by an average margin of more than six lengths. And it took an extremely talented older horse, Invasor, to finally halt him in his tracks.

5. Arrogate, 2016

Beginning with a record-setting Travers win in time and margin of victory, he pulled off a series of four performances – the others being the Breeders’ Cup Classic, Pegasus World Cup (G1), and Dubai World Cup (G1) — that were as brilliant as any posted by an American-based Thoroughbred this century. The anticlimactic ending to his career, which cost him another championship, remains head-shaking.

4. Forty Niner, 1988

To have horses of hickory like him around again. A champion at two, he was fully on the go at age three, running 13 times in the span of nine months while posting nail-biting wins in the Haskell (G1), Travers, and inaugural NYRA Mile. Unlucky not to catch Winning Colors in the Kentucky Derby, perhaps his finest defeat was by a mere neck to Alysheba in one of the deepest editions ever of the Woodward (G1).

3. Java Gold, 1987

As a wet-behind-the-ears fan at the age of 10, I very much disliked how he opportunistically defeated Alysheba, Bet Twice, and other classic veterans in the Travers over a sloppy track. Only with maturity and hindsight do I appreciate Mack Miller’s textbook horsemanship that enabled him to do that, as well as beat elders in the Whitney (G1) and Marlboro Cup (G1). A budding star whose career was cut way too short.

2. Holy Bull, 1994

He won the Travers on sheer class and guts over rivals who flattered him all season and duly made the best East Coast older horses look very ordinary in the Metropolitan H. (G1) and Woodward. Before his injury against Cigar in the Donn H. (G1), his only two blips were due to a breathing obstruction in the Fountain of Youth (G2) and a poor start in the Kentucky Derby. An indisputable end-of-the-century great.

1. Easy Goer, 1989

My immature 12-year-old brain thought him overrated (especially when Sunday Silence was around) to the point of arrogance. But never does a year go by when I don’t wish more horses like him would come around. I caught the end of a magical era, when horses dutifully ran in all three Triple Crown races without complaints about spacing and would often face older horses before the Breeders’ Cup. He did it three times, winning the Whitney, Woodward, and Jockey Club Gold Cup. 

Remember what they took from you.