Smarty Jones, the star racehorse, has become a blue-collar icon in Philadelphia, according to the
New York Times' horse racing blog,
The Rail.
In 2004, blue-and-white Smarty Jones posters bedecked nearly every inch of the standing-room-only Belmont Park, with 120,000-plus fans rooting their hearts out for the little horse that could to complete the first Triple Crown in 26 years. Smarty Jones, a Pennsylvania homebred owned by Pat and Roy Chapman, had become a Philadelphia icon, a blue-collar overachiever from Philadelphia Park ready to take his place alongside the 1974 Stanley Cup-winning Flyers and Rocky Balboa in Philadelphia lore. A ticker-tape parade down Broad Street for Smarty Jones had already been planned.
As for the rest of us, Smarty Jones had seized the collective imagination of a country still reeling from the events of Sept. 11 and the Iraq war, a nation desperately needing something to root for. It had been 26 long years since Affirmed won the Triple Crown in 1978. In the interim, the nation, especially New York City, had been battered and bruised. We needed something to celebrate, which is how the 2004 Belmont had been dubbed the Smarty Party.
Original source: The New York Times
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