Triple Crown Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Triple Crown trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Triple Crown is the hardest prize in American horse racing: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes, run within five weeks by three-year-olds. Only 13 horses have ever swept all three. This quiz covers every winner from Sir Barton in 1919 to Justify in 2018, the jockeys and trainers behind them, the near-misses that broke hearts at Belmont, and the roses, black-eyed Susans and carnations that make each race its own event. Every answer is sourced and explained, so you leave knowing why Secretariat's Belmont still stands as the greatest race ever run.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which horse in 1919 became the first winner of the American Triple Crown?
Sir Barton
Sir Barton had never won a race before he took the Kentucky Derby by five lengths. He won the Preakness four days later, years before anyone called the three races a Triple Crown.
Q 02Turf writer Charles Hatton is credited with popularizing "Triple Crown" after which horse's 1930 sweep?
Gallant Fox
Gallant Fox swept the races in 1930, seven years after the New York Times had first used the phrase. That August he lost the Travers Stakes to Jim Dandy, a 100-1 outsider.
Q 03Which 1935 Triple Crown winner was the son of the previous winner?
Omaha
Omaha was sent to England at four and started favorite for the Ascot Gold Cup, only to lose to the filly Quashed by the narrowest of margins. He was buried at a racetrack in Omaha, Nebraska.
Q 04Which 1937 Triple Crown winner lost the 1938 "Match Race of the Century" to Seabiscuit?
War Admiral
War Admiral was the heavy favorite, but Seabiscuit took the early lead and won by four lengths in track-record time. Some 40 million people followed the race on the radio.
Q 05Which 1941 Triple Crown winner was nicknamed "Mr. Longtail"?
Whirlaway
Whirlaway kept drifting wide in his races until his trainer fitted a blinker over his right eye. He then won the Kentucky Derby by eight lengths.
Q 06Which 1943 Triple Crown winner took the Belmont Stakes by a record margin that stood for 30 years?
Count Fleet
Count Fleet won all six of his races that year. Owner John Hertz, of rental-car fame, had wanted to sell him as a youngster until jockey Johnny Longden talked him out of it.
Q 07Which 1946 Triple Crown winner is the only one bred in Texas?
Assault
Assault stepped on a sharp object as a foal, leaving his right front hoof misshapen. He limped at a walk but galloped true, and fans called the King Ranch colt the "Club-footed Comet".
Q 08Which 1948 Triple Crown winner was the first horse to win US$1,000,000 in earnings?
Citation
Citation won 19 of his 20 starts in 1948, then lost all of 1949 to injury. He passed $1 million only in 1951, at age six, in the final race of his career.
Q 09Which 1977 winner was the first to take the Triple Crown while undefeated?
Seattle Slew
Seattle Slew was bought for just $17,500 as a yearling. He reached the Kentucky Derby unbeaten in six starts and came out of the Belmont still without a defeat.
Q 10Which 1978 winner beat rival Alydar into second place in all three Triple Crown races?
Affirmed
Affirmed won the Kentucky Derby by a length and a half and the Preakness by a neck. Yet it was Alydar who had started the Derby as the 6-5 favorite.
Q 11Which horse ended a 37-year drought by winning the Triple Crown in 2015?
American Pharoah
American Pharoah was upset in the Travers Stakes that summer, then ended his career by winning the Breeders' Cup Classic by six and a half lengths in track-record time.
Q 12Which horse became the 13th American Triple Crown winner in 2018?
Justify
Justify never raced as a two-year-old and made all six of his starts within 111 days. A swollen ankle ended his career a few weeks after the Belmont.
Q 13By how many lengths did Secretariat win the 1973 Belmont Stakes?
31
He won by 31 lengths. A winning $2 ticket paid only $2.20, and more than 5,000 of them were never cashed, kept instead as souvenirs.
Q 21Secretariat was syndicated for a record $6.08 million in early 1973 to pay what?
Estate taxes
Estate taxes: the stable's founder died that January, and rather than sell the colt his daughter had him split into 32 shares at $190,000 each, on condition that he retire to stud at the end of the year.
Q 22Secretariat stood at stud and is buried in Kentucky, but in which state was he foaled?
Virginia
Virginia: he was born in 1970 at The Meadow, a farm near Doswell. Its grounds became an event park that has hosted the State Fair of Virginia since 2009.
Q 23Which racetrack hosts the Kentucky Derby?
Churchill Downs
Q 14What was Secretariat's famous nickname?
Big Red
Big Red fit a tall, bright chestnut, and soon the whole country knew the name. Between the Preakness and the Belmont he was on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated.
Q 15Who rode Secretariat to the 1973 Triple Crown?
Ron Turcotte
Ron Turcotte, a lumberjack in New Brunswick as a teenager, had won the 1972 Derby and Belmont on stablemate Riva Ridge. A fall in a 1978 race left him paralyzed and ended his career.
Q 16Which rival chased Secretariat early in the 1973 Belmont, then faded to last?
Sham
Sham, second in the Derby and Preakness, ran with him through a blistering opening half-mile, then tired and finished last of five. Secretariat's time of 2:24 beat the old record by more than two seconds.
Q 17Who trained Secretariat?
Lucien Laurin
Lucien Laurin came out of retirement in 1971 to fill in at Meadow Stable when his son Roger left the job for the Phipps family. The stopgap post brought him two straight Kentucky Derby winners.
Q 18Which woman ran Meadow Stable and raced Secretariat?
Penny Chenery
Penny Chenery was raising four children in Colorado when her father's illness pulled her into the family stable. In 1983 she became one of the first three women admitted to the Jockey Club.
Q 19Stable secretary Elizabeth Ham took Secretariat's name from the secretariat of which international body?
The League of Nations
The League of Nations. Ham had once been secretary to an American diplomat who led a delegation to talks in Geneva, home of its secretariat, and she put the word forward after the Jockey Club turned down the first three names.
Q 20Which stallion sired Secretariat?
Bold Ruler
Bold Ruler's owners, the Phipps family, shared his foals with mare owners by coin toss. Ogden Phipps won the 1969 toss and chose a filly who never won a race, so the unborn Secretariat went to the loser.
Churchill Downs is named for John and Henry Churchill, who provided the land to their nephew Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr., the race's founder and a grandson of explorer William Clark.
Q 24The Preakness Stakes is traditionally run at which Baltimore track?
Pimlico Race Course
Pimlico Race Course has not always been its home: the race spent 15 straight years in New York before returning in 1909. In 2026 it moved to Laurel Park while Pimlico was rebuilt.
Q 25Which track hosted the Belmont Stakes from 2024 to 2026 while Belmont Park was rebuilt?
Saratoga Race Course
Saratoga Race Course staged three runnings while a new Belmont Park went up, each shortened because its dirt track is smaller. The race was set to return home in 2027.
Q 26How long is the Kentucky Derby?
1 1/4 miles
1 1/4 miles since 1896. The first 21 runnings covered a mile and a half, until that was judged too far for three-year-olds so early in the spring.
Q 27The Kentucky Derby is known by what floral nickname?
The Run for the Roses
The Run for the Roses was coined in 1925 by New York sports columnist Bill Corum, who a quarter of a century later was running the track himself. The winner's garland holds more than 400 red roses.
Q 28The Belmont Stakes winner is draped in a blanket of which flower?
White carnations
White carnations, said to stand for love and luck, are glued flower by flower onto a green velvet cloth to make the winner's blanket.
Q 29The Preakness winner is draped in a blanket made to look like which flower?
Black-eyed Susans
Black-eyed Susans, Maryland's state flower, do not bloom until weeks after the race. For decades yellow daisies had their centers painted black to pass for them; look-alike Viking poms are used now.
Q 30Which Kentucky city has hosted the Derby every year since 1875?
Louisville
Louisville has staged every running since Aristides won the first before about 10,000 people. War and a pandemic only delayed it: the 1945 and 2020 races were run later in the year.