So now what? Having a Triple Crown winner in our midst for the first time in almost four decades allows us to ask a question we haven’t heard since Affirmed was a 4-year-old in 1979: Where should the Triple Crown winner run next? In addition to celebrating American Pharoah’s present, we get to speculate about his future. Let’s be clear: American Pharoah need do nothing more to secure his place in history. Even if he never runs again, he will be the Horse of the Year for 2015. He is a cinch to be enshrined in racing’s Hall of Fame when he becomes eligible in 2020, joining the sport’s 11 other winners of the Crown. We have gotten so accustomed to seeing classic winners prematurely whisked off to stud before their time that we may have forgotten something: The Crown has been only Act 1 for its most recent winners. Citation (1948), Secretariat (1973), Seattle Slew (1977), and Affirmed (1978) still had a lot of racing in them, combining for 32 victories in 52 starts after their Belmonts. In different ways, they all burnished their already-historic achievements. Citation accounted for nearly half of those starts and victories, going 15 for 25 after the 1948 Belmont. He ran another 10 times as a 3-year-old, winning all 10 starts to complete an incredible 19-for-20 3-year-old campaign. He probably should have stopped there, but Calumet Farm was obsessed with his earning $1 million. He did not race at 4, then returned at 5 and lost 11 of his next 13, finishing second eight times, before winning his final three starts (and hitting the $1 million mark) as a 6-year-old in 1951. Secretariat was the only one of the quartet who did not race after his 3-year-old season, but he completed that campaign with a flourish. He won 4 of his 6 remaining starts, including a track-record victory over Riva Ridge in the Marlboro Cup and two runaway victories on the grass. Seattle Slew raced just once more as a 3-year-old after the 1977 Belmont, suffering his first career defeat in the Swaps Stakes, then was sidelined for 10 months. He returned to win five of his final seven starts as a 4-year-old, including powerful victories over Exceller in the Marlboro and Affirmed in the Woodward. Those performances, as well as his courageous second-place finish in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, took him to a different level in the eyes of a public that had considered him an unworthy successor to Secretariat. Affirmed lost five of his next six starts after the 1978 Belmont, twice finishing behind Seattle Slew. He then reeled off seven straight victories as a 4-year-old, six of them Grade 1 races from coast to coast, concluding his career with a stubborn victory over Spectacular Bid in the Gold Cup. The post-Belmont careers of these Triple Crown winners have common threads. Each of them lost races and went through rough patches but more than made up for them with new bursts of excellence as they concluded their careers. With a stud deal in place that almost ensures his retirement at the end of this year, American Pharoah probably will have just four more starts – I’m guessing Haskell, Pacific Classic, Awesome Again, and Breeders’ Cup Classic. Win or lose, it’s too bad he won’t have a 4-year-old campaign as Seattle Slew and Affimred did, but the rest of his 2015 should be fascinating. There are a lot of things to like about American Pharoah finally ending the Triple Crown drought. He was the first 2-year-old champion to win the Derby and Preakness since Spectacular Bid. He’s a likeable colt with the temperament and tactical speed to adjust to various race scenarios and make his own luck. He just might go through his 3-year-old season undefeated. Perhaps the best thing about his Triple Crown is that it happened before the sport’s executives got around to ruining the series by changing the rules. Despite calls for more time between races or requiring that horses run in the Derby to qualify for the Belmont, American Pharoah won the race at the same high degree of difficulty as his predecessors: three races in five weeks with fresh challengers taking their shots in the second and third legs. Instead of having him win a Crown with an asterisk, where we all now would be debating whether it was a “real” Triple Crown victory, he earned it the hard way and reconnected the sport to its glory days. “We watched a great horse run yesterday,” trainer Nick Zito said Sunday. Last year, California Chrome’s owner said we’ll never witness a Triple Crown in his lifetime. Nick Zito’s been saying for years: “Don’t change it. Don’t change it because it’s the hardest thing to do in sports, and when a great horse comes along, you’ll see it.” We did, and with any luck, the story will continue for a while and get even better.