Nijinsky at Epsom: The Last Triple Crown

Breeding and Early Life

Nijinsky was foaled on February 21, 1967, at E.P. Taylor's Windfields Farm in Ontario, Canada. His sire was Northern Dancer — the compact, fiercely competitive Canadian-bred horse who had won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes in 1964 and who would go on to become the most influential sire in the history of Thoroughbred breeding. His dam was Flaming Page, a stakes winner by Bull Page, giving Nijinsky a combination of speed and stamina that the very best Flat horses require.

Taylor, a Canadian industrialist and one of the most important figures in mid-century Thoroughbred breeding, initially intended to keep Nijinsky in North America. Charles Engelhard — the American industrialist who inspired Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, and one of the great racing patrons of the era — changed his mind with an offer of $84,000, a record for a Northern Dancer yearling. The decision to send the colt to Vincent O'Brien at Ballydoyle in Tipperary would prove transformational for everyone involved.

Physical Description

Nijinsky was a big, powerful bay colt — larger than his sire, who was famously compact — with a presence in the paddock that observers consistently described as regal. He stood over sixteen hands and combined physical scope with an elasticity of movement that is the defining characteristic of great horses. His walk was unusually long and fluid; his canter, those who saw him work at Ballydoyle reported, was close to mechanical perfection.

Lester Piggott, who rode him throughout his Classic campaign, said Nijinsky gave him the sensation of riding a horse running on invisible rails — the straightness of his action, the smoothness of his acceleration, was unlike anything he had experienced on any other horse. That is high praise from a man who rode virtually every great European Flat horse of the 1960s and 1970s.

Two-Year-Old Season

Nijinsky began his racing career in Ireland in 1969, making his debut at The Curragh in July. He won by three lengths, then won the Railway Stakes (then a Group equivalent trial), the Anglesey Stakes and the Beresford Stakes — four races, four wins, each more impressive than the last. He ended his juvenile season by travelling to Newmarket for the Dewhurst Stakes, the most important two-year-old race in Britain, and won it by three lengths in a performance that left no doubt about his Classic credentials.

He was unbeaten going into his three-year-old season. The question was not whether he was the best horse in the field for the Classics — it was by how much.

The Three-Year-Old Season: Before Epsom

The 2000 Guineas at Newmarket in May 1970 was Nijinsky's first start of the year and his first race outside Ireland. He won by two and a half lengths, cantering in the final furlong in a manner that suggested Piggott had barely asked a question. The time was unremarkable — Newmarket's Rowley Mile can be slow in spring — but the style of the victory was anything but ordinary.

From Newmarket, Nijinsky went directly to Epsom and the Derby. He had five weeks between the races — normal preparation for the era — and arrived at Epsom as the overwhelming favourite, installed at 11/8, a remarkably short price for a race of thirty runners over a course as testing and unusual as the Epsom Downs circuit.

Character

Those who knew Nijinsky at Ballydoyle describe a horse of exceptional sensitivity — highly strung, easily unsettled, requiring careful management that O'Brien and his team were uniquely equipped to provide. He was not the dominant, confident character that some great horses project; he was more inward, electric, contained. The calmness that Piggott imposed on him in races — the quietness of his hands, the stillness of his presence — was a critical element in Nijinsky's performances. A different jockey, a different trainer, and the story might have been different.

He was also, by every account, extraordinarily beautiful. The photographs from Epsom show a horse of balanced, classical conformation — the kind of horse that breeders describe as the ideal type, before acknowledging that ideal types rarely exist outside theoretical frameworks. Nijinsky existed inside them.

The 2000 Guineas — Newmarket, 2 May 1970

The first leg of the Triple Crown is run over a mile on the Rowley Mile at Newmarket — a wide, straight, exposed track that tests pure speed and, particularly in May, a horse's willingness to race in potentially testing conditions. Nijinsky faced a strong field including Yellow God, a fast and experienced rival from France, and the English-trained Lorenzaccio.

Piggott rode with characteristic economy. Nijinsky settled in the middle of the field, moved smoothly through the Dip — Newmarket's final undulation before the long run to the line — and accelerated clear without being asked for anything close to maximum effort. He won by two and a half lengths, with Yellow God second and My Swallow, another highly regarded rival, in third.

The winning time was ordinary. The manner was not. The racing press reached for their superlatives. O'Brien, watching from the stands, said only that the horse had done what was required of him. It was the kind of understatement that only men completely confident in what they have can produce.

The Derby — Epsom Downs, 3 June 1970

The Derby is the greatest Flat race in the world — the most complete test, over the most unusual course, at the moment of a Thoroughbred's physical peak. To win it requires speed sufficient for a mile and a half at full gallop, the physical balance to handle Epsom's extraordinary topography (the sharp descent of Tattenham Hill, the camber of the final bend, the stiff uphill finish), and the temperament to perform in front of a crowd of 100,000 on the most pressurised afternoon of a horse's life.

Nijinsky was drawn in stall twelve of thirty runners. Piggott, who by 1970 had already won the Derby four times, settled him towards the rear of the field through the early stages. On the descent to Tattenham Corner, the horse moved fluidly, neither rushing nor dropping back, his action unchanged by the gradient. As the field turned for home, Piggott began to move him through the field with the measured, unhurried confidence that is the hallmark of a jockey certain of the outcome.

Nijinsky hit the front a furlong and a half out. He went clear without drama, without Piggott moving his hands, without the crowd's noise disturbing the rhythm of his stride. He crossed the line two and a half lengths ahead of Gyr, trained in France and considered a serious danger beforehand. The third horse, Stintino, finished ten lengths further back. The margin of superiority was greater than the bare result suggests.

The time — 2 minutes 34.68 seconds — was good but not exceptional. The performance was something else entirely. The racing press were unanimous: this was the best Derby performance in living memory. Timeform, the race ratings organisation, gave Nijinsky a rating that placed him at the top of the historical Flat rankings for his era.

The St Leger — Doncaster, 12 September 1970

The St Leger, the final and longest Classic at a mile and six furlongs, is where the Triple Crown is won or lost. It is the staying test, run at the end of a gruelling season, and it has broken many horses that arrived at Doncaster with records intact. Nijinsky had had a hard summer. After the Derby he won the Irish Derby at The Curragh and then the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot — a race against older horses that he won with contemptuous ease, defeating Blakeney and Crepello among others.

By September, the season was beginning to take its toll. He arrived at Doncaster slightly drawn in appearance, his coat lacking the gleam it had carried at Epsom. But he won. He beat Meadowville by a length in a race that, by his own standards, was effortful rather than dominant.

The Triple Crown was complete. Piggott described the feeling of crossing the line at Doncaster as the most significant moment of his career. O'Brien allowed himself a rare public expression of satisfaction. The racing world understood it had witnessed something historic.

After the Triple Crown

Nijinsky ran twice more in 1970 — and lost both. The Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, where he was narrowly beaten by Sassafras in circumstances still debated (a delayed reaction to ringworm that had affected his preparation, and a wide draw in a large field), and the Champion Stakes at Newmarket, where he was beaten again. The defeats were shocking not because they were wrong but because the standard he had set made anything less than perfection feel like failure.

He retired to stud in Kentucky, where he became one of the most influential sires in the history of the breed. His sons included Golden Fleece, Caerleon, Shadeed and the remarkable Lammtarra; his daughters founded bloodlines that run through virtually every major Thoroughbred family today. Northern Dancer's dominance of modern breeding runs substantially through Nijinsky's influence.

The Derby Turning for Home

The image that defines Nijinsky at Epsom is not the finish. It is the moment at Tattenham Corner when Piggott begins to move him through the field. The camera catches the horse at the precise instant he opens his stride — a lengthening of movement so smooth and sudden that the horses around him appear to be standing still. It is the visual evidence of the quality gap between a generational champion and a field of very good horses.

Piggott's hands are still. His body is quiet. He is not asking, merely allowing. Nijinsky does the rest, and in the footage you can watch the distance between him and the rest of the field increase with the mechanical certainty of an equation resolving itself.

The Pre-Race Parade

Eyewitness accounts of Nijinsky's appearance in the Epsom paddock before the 1970 Derby consistently note the same thing: a stillness that felt impossible given the noise, the crowd, the occasion. Where other horses were circling anxiously, their flanks dark with sweat, Nijinsky walked with a measured, almost regal calm that silenced those nearest to him.

This was, in part, a function of his training. O'Brien's management of high-strung horses was exceptionally sophisticated, and the preparation of Nijinsky for the Derby involved precise attention to the horse's mental state as much as his physical readiness. But those who were there also describe something else — a quality in the horse himself that felt like composure rather than docility. He was not calm because he had been quieted; he was calm because he was entirely ready.

Piggott's Assessment

Lester Piggott rode nine Derby winners. Asked repeatedly over the subsequent decades which was the best, he always said Nijinsky. Not Sir Ivor, not Roberto, not Empery — Nijinsky. The specificity of his praise is revealing: it was not simply that the horse was the fastest, or the most gifted, but that he gave Piggott the sensation of riding something operating at a different level from anything else he had experienced.

Piggott was not given to sentimentality about horses. He was a professional, a craftsman, a man who assessed racehorses with the dispassion of an engineer. When he placed Nijinsky above every other Derby winner he rode, it carried the weight of considered technical judgment rather than nostalgia.

The Silence After the King George

In late July 1970, six weeks after the Derby, Nijinsky ran in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot — the mid-season championship for older horses. The field included Blakeney, who had won the previous year's Derby, and several of the best middle-distance horses in Europe.

Nijinsky won by two lengths without being asked a serious question. But what witnesses remember most vividly is the silence in the Ascot crowd as the result became clear — not the roar that greets a great performance, but a momentary quiet, as if 20,000 people had simultaneously exhaled and not yet found the words. It was the sound of a crowd understanding that what it had just witnessed was not an ordinary racing achievement.

Sassafras and the Arc

The defeat at Longchamp in October remains one of the most discussed results in racing history. Nijinsky, drawn wide in a large field, was caught in a pocket for much of the race and only emerged into clear running late. He was beaten by a head by Sassafras, the French horse trained by François Mathet, in what many observers then and since have argued was a circumstantial defeat rather than a genuine one.

O'Brien believed the ringworm that had affected Nijinsky's coat and energy through late summer had taken more from him than was apparent. Piggott was less certain — he felt the draw and the traffic had cost the race. The debate has never been resolved. What is certain is that Nijinsky's performance at Longchamp, even in defeat, was extraordinary by any standard except his own.

It is the measure of his achievement that a loss by a head in the Arc de Triomphe was treated as a tragedy rather than a competitive defeat.

The Triple Crown's Absence

In the fifty-four years since Nijinsky completed the Triple Crown, no horse has repeated the feat. Several have come close — Oh So Sharp (1985), Nashwan (1989), Sea The Stars (2009), Frankel (2011, who bypassed the St Leger) — but none has won all three Classics in a single season. The Triple Crown's rarity is partly a function of the racing calendar (three major races in four months is an enormous physical demand), partly a function of the modern tendency to avoid the St Leger's stamina test with horses whose commercial value depends on speed pedigree, and partly a function of simple probability: it requires a horse capable of winning over a mile, a mile and a half, and a mile and six furlongs, on three different tracks, across different ground conditions, in the same year.

What Nijinsky achieved in 1970 remains the standard against which every subsequent Classic generation is measured. The question asked each spring at Newmarket, at Epsom, at Doncaster — "could this be the one?" — is asked in Nijinsky's shadow.

His Influence at Stud

Nijinsky retired to Claiborne Farm in Kentucky, where he stood as a stallion from 1971 until his death in 1992 aged twenty-five. His influence on the modern Thoroughbred is incalculable. His son Golden Fleece won the Derby in 1982 in a performance that some rated above Nijinsky's own Derby win; his other sons included Caerleon (sire of Generous), Shahrastani (Derby winner 1986) and the Italian champion Artaius.

Through his daughters, Nijinsky's influence runs even deeper. The major European bloodlines of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries — Sadler's Wells, Montjeu, Galileo, Danehill — carry Nijinsky's inheritance in their pedigrees. Northern Dancer's dominance of global breeding runs substantially through his greatest son.

What He Meant to Epsom

The Derby is the race that defines Epsom Downs — the reason the track exists, the reason 100,000 people gather on a Surrey hill on the first Saturday of June every year. Nijinsky's Derby gave the race something it had always needed: a performance so definitively superior that it became the point of reference for everything that followed.

Every Derby winner since 1970 has been assessed against Nijinsky. Does he move through the field as smoothly? Does he win with that degree of authority? Is there that quality of inevitability in the closing stages? The answer, more than half a century on, is almost always no. That is the measure of what happened at Epsom on 3 June 1970.

The Timeform Rating

Timeform, whose ratings system is the most respected quantitative assessment of Flat horse performance in British racing, gave Nijinsky a rating of 138 — the highest they had assigned to any horse racing in Europe at that point. Only Frankel, rated 147 during his unbeaten career between 2010 and 2012, has subsequently exceeded it. The gap between Nijinsky and the rest of his era was not marginal.

A Final Note

Vincent O'Brien trained many great horses. He won the Cheltenham Gold Cup three times with different horses in the 1950s, trained Sir Ivor, Roberto, Alleged, The Minstrel and Sadler's Wells. He was asked about Nijinsky in almost every interview he gave in the decades after 1970. He always gave the same answer: the best horse I ever trained.

For a man who trained the best horse in the world in multiple different eras, that answer is the final word.