Bred and owned by Harbour View Farm, under the auspices of American financier Louis Wolfson, and trained by Cuban-born Lazaro ‘Laz’ Barrera, Affirmed is best remembered for winning the American Triple Crown – that is, the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes – in 1979. In so doing, he made Steve Cauthen, who turned 19 on May 1, 1979, four days before the Kentucky Derby, the youngest jockey ever to win that coveted champhionship.
Foaled at Harbor View Farm in Ocala, Florida on February 21, 1975, Affirmed made a winning two-year-old debut in maiden special weight race at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York on May 24, 1977. He first met Alydar, who was making his debut, on his next start in the now-defunct Youthful Stakes, also at Belmont, the following month and the pair would go on to become career-long rivals.
Affirmed and Alydar met six times as two-year-olds, with the former winning on four occasions, and seven out of nine races in the season as a whole. The pair finished first and second in all three Triple Crown races, leaving Alydar with the dubious distinction of becoming the first horse to finish runner-up in all three. Alydar did have the last laugh when ‘winning’ their final meeting, in the Travers Stakes at Saratoga on August 19, 1978, but needed the help of the stewards to do so.
Affirmed was retired at the end of 1979 after winning 22 of his 29 races and a then-record $2,393,818 in prize money. He finished outside the first three just once, when fifth in the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park in 1978, after his saddle slipped. He subsequently stood at stud at Jonabell Farm near Lexington, Kentucky, where he was humanely euthanised in early 2001, just turned 26, having suffered from the incurable hoof disease laminitis.