Newtown resident and Newtown Bee staffer Bridget Seaman’s family always owned horses. And as a child, she fondly remembers how all her relatives would gather around the television every year as horse racing’s Triple Crown — The Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes — played out in black and white.

By the time she was 13, Ms Seaman’s older siblings decided it was time she witnessed the real thing, so they packed her up and drove the 90 minutes from Newtown to Elmont, N.Y., to see a Belmont Stakes in person.

That was 1977, the year Seattle Slew took home Triple Crown honors, and Ms Seaman still has clear memories of that momentous event. Unfortunately, the next year, her worried mother decided to keep her daughter home from the race track, causing her to miss Affirmed capturing the 1978 Triple Crown victory — the last Triple Crown to be won for 37 years.

Not that she didn’t chase a few other hopefuls. Starting when she turned 18, Ms Seaman returned every year to the Belmont Stakes, where she saw no less than ten hopefuls pursue and fail at attaining that elusive pinnacle of horse racing honors.

“When you go to the Super Bowl, or the last game of the World Series or the Stanley Cup, you know you are going to leave there seeing a world champion,” Ms Seaman observed this week. “But with the Triple Crown, that is seldom the case.”

In the history of American Thoroughbred Horse Racing, there have only been a dozen Triple Crown winners going back to 1919.

And while Ms Seaman had already seen one of those dozen winners, she found herself at a point this year weighing whether she would ever attend another Belmont Stakes. That is because she learned her traditional viewing location on one of the benches installed on the apron between the grandstand and the track was being threatened.

Every year, she would arrive at Belmont early in the morning to stake out a bench seat hours before the first races of the day commenced. But a few months ago she discovered track organizers were planning to remove the benches to make room on the apron for more attendees.

“There was no way I could go and stand on that apron for seven or eight hours,” she said. So she, along with family members and other fans of the apron seating, mounted a protest, taking to social networks along with sending emails and making calls to the track in the hope of getting the bench removal plan reversed.

“Even though we were starting to see and hear that the benches would stay, up to the day of the race I wasn’t sure I’d find my regular seat,” she said. “But since I already purchased a $40 parking pass, I decided to hope for the best and go. And when we got in, the benches were there!”

From her vantage point throughout race day last Saturday, Ms Seaman and her husband Jim Walker, along with former locals Paul Harrison and Sheila Maher watched the Belmont crowd swell, as excitement continued to build toward the late afternoon main event.

“There was plenty to do, people watching and placing a few bets. There were ten races before the Belmont Stakes and the atmosphere was electric by post time,” she recalled.

Watching from about a dozen yards away, she saw each horse including American Pharoah being led into their respective starting gate.

“When there is a Triple Crown at stake, it’s always a lot more intense,” she said. “And being on the apron, you get to see the horses going into the gate, and then you get to see them cross the finish line, but most of the rest of the race is blocked, so you have to watch it on monitors.”

As she and her apron-mates watched, the pack of horses rounded the final curve and American Pharoah began pulling ahead.

“At that point I could actually feel the roar building and following the horses as they headed down the final stretch,” Ms Seaman recalled. “And when he hit the finish line it was utter pandemonium, people screaming, crying, we were hugging total strangers because we all knew we just saw history being made — at that point it was just a giant mutual love fest.”

But then the entire crowd has to wait until racing officials review and proclaim that the apparent winner is legitimate.

“You hold your breath until the stewards review the race, hoping no inquiry sign pops up,” she said. “I’ve seen several occasions where the first place horse was disqualified or pushed back after an inquiry.”

Then, when the final word came down, it was bedlam again as Ms Seaman watched American Pharoah and jockey Victor Espinoza claim their blanket of roses.

Leading up to race day, Ms Seaman said she never thought she would see another triple crown winner, but her love of the sport and her dedication to tradition delivered an opportunity to see Triple Crown lightning strike twice.