First and foremost, I am a fan of horse racing and a few other sports, including tennis. I love the championship moment, that instant when it’s game, set, and match and the player collapses on the court in elation. I love Larry Collmus’s call of the 2015 Belmont Stakes, when, finally, American Pharoah was the ONE. I love those moments because, in an instant, life smiles on the player, the horse, the people who love them, and those watching it all play out. Those are moments that overshadow the dark ones in their lives and ours as well.

Those moments of triumph make getting up each morning and working toward a goal worth all of the hard work, the long hours, the absolute commitment. Today, we may see yet another of those moments. I have been around long enough to have seen my share of almosts: Sunday Silence, Silver Charm, Real Quiet, Charismatic, War Emblem, Funny Cide, Smarty Jones, Big Brown, I’ll Have Another, California Chrome. Finally, though, I saw greatness incarnate when AP wowed us at Big Sandy. I cried in elation for hours afterward. I hope today that I get to do the same, that we will see Justify echo what American Pharoah did three years ago and bring us all to another one of those moments, the kind that you remember where you were and what you were doing when it happened.

He has done the improbable so far: broken the curse of Apollo in a driving rain, won the Preakness on a swamp track, and now come to New York, to Belmont, on the precipice of immortality. All that stands between him and that elite fraternity is 12 furlongs and nine other horses. I hope that I will need to revise my manuscript to reflect the addition of another name to this pantheon of greatness.

Good luck, Justify! Good luck to you and Mike Smith and Bob Baffert and all of the smiling faces behind you! We can’t wait to see you fly!