ESPN Horse Turner rooting for Baffert and Pharoah

ELMONT, N.Y. -- Billy Turner holds a unique position in this grand old world.

At age 75, he's the only person on Earth who can say he has trained a Triple Crown winner.

It happened 38 years ago, when Turner swept the 1977 Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes with the undefeated Seattle Slew.

He wasn't all that surprised when, a year later, trainer Laz Barrera, who died in 1991, duplicated his feat with Affirmed. Yet after being part of a glorious period that produced three Triple Crown winners in six tries, he never even imagined that in 2015 he would be discussing a 37-year Triple Crown drought.

"I could see 10 years going by without a Triple Crown winner," Turner said Monday between races at Belmont Park. "But 37? Never. I never dreamed it would be that long."

With some racing luck, though, Turner could have some company in his one-man fraternity in less than two weeks. Trainer Bob Baffert will take his fourth crack at saddling the sport's long-awaited 12th Triple Crown champion when he sends out owner Ahmed Zayat's American Pharoah in the June 6 Belmont Stakes, and hopes across the industry are rampant that the reigning 2-year-old champion is the right one to end the long spell of disappointment.

After he followed up his one-length victory in the Kentucky Derby with a seven-length score in the Preakness, American Pharoah figures to be an odds-on choice in the mile-and-a-half Test of the Champion. That puts Baffert in a prime position to join Turner's "club," and the Rochester, New York, native chuckles at the prospect of finally opening the door to let someone in.

"Can you see me and Bob Baffert sitting around smoking cigars in the Triple Crown club?" Turner said with a laugh. "That would be quite a scene.

"Bob's a fine guy and great trainer who is focused on [the] Triple Crown, and I'd be happy if he did it. Over the years, there have been a few horses that came close that I didn't want to see win the Triple Crown. But this is really a good, good horse. In the Preakness, he was the only one who ran like a racehorse."

Turner calls American Pharoah the "dominant horse" among this year's 3-year-old crop, but he stopped well short of saying the homebred son of Pioneerof the Nile will complete the famed sweep. After witnessing 13 near misses with Derby and Preakness winners since 1978, Turner knows how difficult the final leg of the three can be and how imposing of a roadblock it can pose -- even for runners bound for the Hall of Fame.

"The best horse doesn't always win the Belmont," Turner says. "What happened last year [with California Chrome] was a classic example of that. He was the best 3-year-old back then, no question about it."

As impressive as American Pharoah has looked to Turner, he's troubled by Baffert's decision to train his Triple Crown candidate at Churchill Downs as opposed to Belmont Park.

"It puzzles me a little bit that they went from Pimlico to Kentucky and then will come up here. That doesn't sit well with me at all," said Turner, who still trains a small string of horses in New York. "[Trainer] Woody Stephens [who won five straight runnings of the Belmont from 1982 to 1986] proved you don't have to have the best horse to win the Belmont Stakes, all you have to do is train here. He was the proof in the pudding. He won the Belmont with two or three real good horses and then with two others who were ordinary. Why did those two win? Because they trained here around this mile-and-a-half track. If you're going out and galloping around this track every day, you don't need a race over it. When you train on that big track, horses feel at home on it."

Yet regardless of whether American Pharoah wins or loses in his upcoming date with destiny, Turner is adamant that the Triple Crown does not need tinkering. He bristles at the notion of changing the race dates or distances, and says it would be "ridiculous" to alter anything.

"If you want to make it easy, no one will get excited about it," Turner said. "It will not be the Triple Crown anymore."

Aside from the specifics about this year's race that can create a problem for American Pharoah, Turner says that over the years he has witnessed industrywide changes in training and breeding that have played a major role in the 37-year Triple Crown drought.

"Breeding has changed. The way we race and train our horses has changed," said Turner, who owns 531 career wins and recorded his last Grade 1 victory in 2000 with Gaviola in the Garden City Breeders' Cup Handicap. "The breeding is now oriented for the sales market rather than racing. Years ago, when the big families controlled breeding, they did it very well. They never bred a mare that had infirmities. Anything that bled was eliminated from the breed. Now if the pedigree is there, people will say we won't race it much, but we'll breed it, people will buy it for a lot of money and good luck to them.

"Horses don't race much at 2 and even at 3 much anymore. They are not trained that hard, and it's not that the trainers don't want to do it, the horses can't take it.

"The one that comes around and can stand the training, you won't beat him."

Perhaps that special colt that possesses both brilliant speed and hickory toughness has finally arrived and will prove his greatness at Belmont Park, just like Affirmed, Seattle Slew, Secretariat, Citation and seven other legendary runners. On June 6 we'll find out. Yet for the last living trainer of a Triple Crown winner, the time to give the fans in the 2010s the same Triple Crown euphoria fans in the 1970s experienced is long overdue.

"It's got to happen," he said. "It would give the sport such a boost, and you hate to see that on hold for so long."

At 37 years -- and perhaps counting -- the wait is indeed frustrating for anyone. Being all alone, like Billy Turner, only adds to it.