Hiring his former copy editor Rosenbush to be editor-in-chief, he brought in new senior editors. He also beefed up the past performance statistics and expanded coverage of industry issues such as performance-enhancing drug use and government regulation of gambling.

“Really there’s no genius at work here,” Rosenbush says. “We cover this sport the way any newspaper would cover baseball, football or basketball.”

Crist also founded the Form’s book-publishing business, DRF Press, which will issue Betting on Myself this fall.

After finishing that manuscript, Crist says he has been spending more time at the racetrack again. Currently that means passing days at Belmont Park, where the New York racing circuit competes in the spring.

When he went to Belmont for the first time in October 1977, Crist watched a horse named Affirmed edge out Alydar in a photo-finish. Without knowing it, he witnessed the early stages of what would become one of horse racing’s greatest rivalries.

The next spring—that of 1978—Affirmed won the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes to nab the famed Triple Crown.

Not since Affirmed has a horse achieved that feat.

This year, a horse named Funny Cide won the Derby and the Preakness. Pending a win in the Belmont Stakes this weekend, he stands to become the first New York-bred horse in history to capture the Triple Crown.

The Daily Racing Form keeps a six-seat box at Belmont, and that’s where Crist will be on Saturday—always a customer of the sport.

“I’ll stay out of the pressbox,” he says. “I always hated it when the bosses would show up on the big days...I just sit out in the box.”

—Staff writer Andrew S. Holbrook can be reached at holbr@fas.harvard.edu.