Well, there goes my interest in the Triple Crown of horse racing.

A beast named Oxbow won the Preakness today. The horse that won the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago, Orb, didn’t make it.

So, there goes any chance of my watching the Belmont Stakes.

You see, I’m kind of a fair-weather horse racing fan. I’ll watch only the Belmont Stakes on one condition: if the same horse wins the first two races of this Triple Crown.

It’s been a good while since a horse won the Triple Crown. Affirmed won it in 1978, just a year after Seattle Slew turned the trick. And it was the great Secretariat who made mincemeat out of the Belmont field in 1973. That, honestly, was the first time I ever got excited about a horse race.

Secretariat had set race records in the Derby and Preakness. He was the heavy favorite to win the Belmont and become the first Triple Crown winner since 1948. My wife and I lived in a small house in Portland, Ore., at the time. We settled down to watch the Belmont that year.

Secretariat not only won the race, the set some kind of record, winning it by 31 lengths. There’s that great shot of jockey Ron Turcotte looking back toward the field as the horse pounded down the stretch. Turcotte said later he looked back because he couldn’t hear the usual sounds one hears in a horse race, such as hooves and other horses’ grunts.

This year, though, the Belmont Stakes is just another horse race. I’m now waiting for next year.