After what is considered a blowout win in horse racing at The Preakness Stakes, Belmont favorite American Pharoah, who won by seven lengths, is looking to win the first Triple Crown since 1978. After American Pharoahs win on Saturday offshore sportsbooks put him as a two-to-three favorite to win at belmont, but as the statistics show, it won’t be easy.

Just last year the horse racing world was in almost the exact same place with Preakness and Kentucky Derby winner California Chrome being put in the spotlight. Along with that Belmont is also the longest track in the Triple Crown at 1.5 miles or 12 Furlongs while the Derby and Preakness are 10 and 9.5 Furlongs. With Belmont being the longer race, it usually gets the blame for why it crushes many hopes for a Triple Crown, but even the winner at Belmont doesn’t win many other races due to the rare lengthiness at Belmont which has become very rare in the U.S. and American horses have little to no experience racing on those longer tracks. Another interesting statistic is that horses who won only one of the shorter races went on to win at Belmont 21.2 percent of the time before 1979 compared to 50 percent of the time if they won both of the shorter races and 15.2 percent since 1979, which means that horses that won one precursor have gotten a little worse and horses that won both shorter races have gone from having the best chances to the worst. This may be due to horses being specialized to win the shorter races which makes them more likely to race the shorter races better.

Horses that race in both the Preakness and Derby are also becoming rarer and rarer which is leading to another big issue: do fresher, more rested horses have an unfair advantage? The last nine Belmont winners have skipped at least one of the precursors. But even if this was the case it still pushes the idea that horses that win at Belmont are more targeted towards winning it. As much as this could be the case it doesn’t explain the dramatic shift in winners.

If horses that had won the Preakness and the Derby were at a disadvantage, horse-betters would most likely have picked up on it, but the market has stayed confident in Triple Crown contenders with all of the contenders since 1979 having at least a 35 percent chance of winning at Belmont with the lowest being Charismatic in 1999 who had a 38.5 percent chance and the highest being Spectacular Bid in 1979 and Big Brown in 2008 who both had a 76.9 percent chance. Although this seems like a big fluke it seems likely that the market has been botching this consistently.

But despite all of the negative talk none of the horses with a chance at the Triple Crown since 1979 have won by more than 7 lengths like American Pharoah did this year. American Pharoah is the favorite for a reason and that reason is because he will be the first horse since 1978 to win a Triple Crown and will be etched into history as one of the best racehorses of all time. You can catch the race June 6 on NBC.