Birdstone, right, with jockey Edgar Prado aboard beats out Smarty Jones and jockey Stewart Elliott to win the 136th running of the Belmont Stakes June 5, 2004, denying Smarty Jones' bid for the Triple Crown. (Stan Honda/Getty Images)

For about 20 seconds there, as he brought Smarty Jones thundering down the final two furlongs of the 2004 Belmont Stakes, Stewart Elliott must have felt he was holding the reigns of immortality in his hands.

The Canadian jockey was out in front with the prospect of bringing home the first winner of American thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown since Steve Cauthen came across on Affirmed in 1978.

Elliott and Smarty Jones were about to join the likes of Jean Cruguet and Seattle Slew (1977) and New Brunswick's Ron Turcotte (aboard the legendary Secretariat in 1973) in what is as exclusive a group as you can find in sports.

Didn't happen. With less than one furlong to go - a lousy 200 metres - Birdstone came sailing past on the right and it was all over.

This Saturday, as the band plays The Sidewalks of New York, jockey Kent Desormeaux will bring the heavily favoured Big Brown out of the paddock in an attempt to become just the fourth winner of the triple in 50 years.

Race already over?

If you listen to the pundits and punters (and the braying of Big Brown's trainer, Rick Dutrow, Jr., who has guaranteed a victory in the way Broadway Joe Namath did in that long-ago Super Bowl III) this race is already over.

But there's a reason only three horses and riders have won the Triple Crown since Citation, with Eddie Arcaro up, in 1948. You can ask Elliott.

"It's just a hard thing to do, you know?" he says, on the phone from New Jersey, where he mostly rides at Monmouth Park. "I think a horse, first thing, has to be very talented. And then I think he's gotta be a little bit versatile, too.

"I think you need a push-button horse, a horse that can pretty much do anything you need him to."

And, he says, you have to be lucky.

That's a lot of needs, and missing just one can turn you into a pretender. There's been six of them in the last 11 seasons alone:

• In 1997, trainer Bob Baffert watched jockey Gary Stevens move Silver Charm to the lead with 400 metres to go and the triple in sight. But Stevens had been so concerned with Free House on one side, he never saw Touch Gold coming on the other side. Down went the dream.
• Baffert was back in 1998 with Real Quiet, a rags-to-riches tale of an inexpensive colt no one believed in except the trainer and his jockey, Desormeaux. He had a five-length lead inside of two furlongs, only to lose in a photo finish — literally by a nose — to Victory Gallop.
• How about 1999? Charismatic took an early lead and had 120,000 hearts a-leaping, but the gruelling mile and a half did the colt in as he was passed in the stretch by two other horses and Lemon Drop Kid won in a photo.
• Then there was War Emblem, in 2002, who stumbled out of the gate, never recovered and had to watch, exhausted, as Sarava (the longest long-shot ever to win the Belmont, at 70-1) crossed the line.

Finally, there was Funny Cide, in 2003.

Trained by Barclay Tagg, who has the Canadian-owned Tale of Ekati in this week's race against Big Brown, Funny Cide was a shoo-in. Everyone said so. Miles above all the other entries five years ago.

A visit from Mother Nature

The only thing that could possibly stop the colt, Tagg said, was a sloppy track.

Of course it rained. And not just any downpour, either — a wrath-of-the-deity flood that almost required winner Empire Maker to breast stroke down the stretch.

Realism has always been Tagg's wont in what's been an almost 40-year training career. And he's no different when it comes to the Triple Crown.

"For one thing, it should be hard. That's the fun of the whole thing," he said last week, on the phone from Belmont Park where he was getting Tale of Ekati ready for a run at the big upset. "It's very difficult to prepare a horse [for the Triple Crown]."

A muddy Jose Santos rides Funny Cide back to the finish line after placing third in the 135th Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park on June 7, 2003. (Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)

Among the problems are getting two or three good prep-race performances out of the animal just to qualify for the Kentucky Derby. And that means racing against the best of a 35,000-horse crop in what's always a tough slog.

Then there's the timing.

"You have three major races in a brief period and they're all over a mile and 3/16ths long, which is all very difficult," Tagg says. "And you have to come back in two weeks [following the Derby] to run the Preakness, and in three weeks to run the Belmont."

Not a lot of time for a top-flight horse.

And there's the distance. For all the three-year-olds, the Belmont's mile and a half is the longest they've ever run, or likely ever will.

"It's something they never do … so they don't have any way to really prepare for it," Tagg says. "It would probably be unimaginable if any of these horses ever had to run a mile and a half again."

Three times the luck

Going an extra quarter mile from the Kentucky Derby's mile and a quarter (the second longest of the three - the Preakness is a mile and 3/16ths) might not seem like a lot, but to the horse, Tagg says, it's a big jump.

"It depends on the horse. Some of them are bred to do it, some of them aren't," he says.

Finally, you need to be lucky. Not just once, but three times.

"There's a lot of luck involved, sure, just to win the Kentucky Derby," Elliott says. "The best horse doesn't have to win the Derby. It's such a big field [20 horses], a lot of things can happen.

"A horse gets grumbly in the gate sometimes [or] he can get shuffled back … there's a lot of things."

Each of those things have to come together in the Preakness and Belmont as well.

Or, it might simply rain.

"Empire Maker loved mud, and Funny Cide hated mud, so there was luck there, too," Tagg says of 2003. "I'm not making excuses. It's bad luck."

Is there nothing a jockey can do?

"I always said, if I get beat, I hope to get beat fair and square, with no excuse," Elliott says. "[If] I don't make a mistake, if the horse doesn't stumble, or if a horse doesn't stumble into us or something [else] go wrong.

"You hope that you have a clean trip, and nothing goes wrong."

And that the weather, the track, the crowd and Lady Luck are on your side.

That's happened, remember, three times in 50 years.