Belmont Stakes 2012: Win Would Make I'll Have Another Sports Hero of the Year

If I’ll Have Another wins the 2012 Belmont Stakes, there is no doubt that he will have pulled off the most impressive feat in sports this year.

There hasn’t been a Triple Crown winner in American thoroughbred horse racing since 1978 and the incredible act has only been accomplished 11 times in history.

It is extremely rare for a horse to be able to win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes as a three-year-old in the same season. The window for opportunity is small and the margin for error is nil.

There is simply no one doing anything remotely close to as rare and as difficult as what I’ll Have Another has a chance to complete on June 9.

The only person that can be considered in the running would be tennis player Novak Djokovic, and it would take a sweep of the Grand Slams this season to even be brought up in the same breath as I’ll Have Another.

Players from the four major sports haven’t been stepping up as consistently as they need to be in order to win any sort of award like this. Even if LeBron James wins his first NBA title, it would be underwhelming compared to the Triple Crown.

Soccer star Lionel Messi has been in peak form for years now, but unfortunately he has set the bar for himself so high that it is almost impossible for him to improve. It is for that reason that he isn’t going to generate much stateside talk about being the sports hero of 2012.

With those bases covered, it’s hard to see a situation where I’ll Have Another’s Triple Crown would not be the best thing to happen in all of sports this year.