ELMONT, N.Y. -- The enthusiastic response to American Pharoah's victory parade at Churchill Downs last Saturday evening pretty much showed how the love affair between fans and racing's newest mega-star remains as strong and fervent as it was a week earlier at a frenzied Belmont Park.

If anything, after a 37-year wait for a 12th Triple Crown champion, his fame and popularity have no doubt grown since the memorable afternoon of June 6. There's no longer any ifs, buts or maybes attached to the Zayat Stables 3-year-old. He is without question the real deal. He's the latest member of racing's most elite fraternity, and while there were 90,000 people on hand to witness his coronation as racing royalty in the Belmont Stakes, there are probably a 100 times that number that would relish the opportunity to be on hand and watch him again.

So for the rest of 2015 - or until a decision to retire him is announced - the major news in Thoroughbred racing will revolve around American Pharoah and every little thing that happens around him. It will be a media event when he walks off a van or simply jogs. Some horse will emerge as the champion older male or the top 3-year-old filly and there's a long list of Grade 1 stakes on the horizon, but for the next few months the horse racing news that figures to crash Twitter will involve American Pharoah and American Pharoah only.

At the present time the animated conversations that will not subside are centering on conjecture about when or if American Pharoah will race again. It's the question that so many people want answered with an immediate, iron-clad guarantee but that's hardly the nature of the sport. Sorry, but much like crying in baseball, there are no guarantees when it comes to horses and races.

Owner Ahmed Zayat and trainer Bob Baffert have expressed every intention in regards to racing their homebred son of Pioneerof the Nile and for now, just two weeks removed from the colt's trip along the grueling Triple Crown trail, that's the best anyone can expect with a horse as valuable and now legendary as American Pharoah. Winning the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes may have seemed like a stroll through the park for the 3-year-old sensation, especially after his 5 ½-length romp in the Belmont, but rest assured it was draining and time for some R & R is surely in order.

How much rest and how much the Triple Crown took out of American Pharoah are the paramount questions that will not be answered for several weeks. And if you want to know exactly how much the series can take out of a horse, keep in mind the last three Triple Crown winners, Hall of Famers Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed, won just 5 of their combined 11 races at three after the Belmont.

That 5-for-11 mark compiled by a trio of the sport's immortals defines the challenge facing Baffert in trying to make American Pharoah the same - if not better - horse he was on the first and third Saturdays in May and the first Saturday in June. And it's also why, in fairness to the horse, if that old spark is not evident in his future training, given the protective comments by everyone around him, it's unlikely that they will make a supreme push to coax it out of him.

Like it or not, given how there's at most a window of a little more than four months left in the majestic horse's career, even a minor setback could turn to be a major obstacle that brings down the curtain on his career.

Some avid fans might bristle at hearing that, but the notion that Zayat and Baffert "owe" it to the racing industry to continue campaigning American Pharoah is, of course, ridiculous. Owning a Thoroughbred race horse is the 180-degree opposite from owning a major league baseball team where you might charge $2,500 for a seat behind home plate and the paying customer has a reasonable expectation that the owner will shell out wads of cash for quality talent.

Despite the impression given off by the sport's most successful figures, owning and caring for a Thoroughbred is an expensive proposition that quite often leads to red ink at the end of the year. Since there are no fund-raisers for owners when they lose money, no one can rightfully demand that they brazenly take a financial risk.

In the case of American Pharoah insurance alone is extremely costly. The basic measuring stick is that the yearly cost of insuring a Thoroughbred in training is about 4 percent of its value. The breeding rights to American Pharoah were sold to Coolmore's Ashford Stud for $20 million before his Triple Crown sweep and it's reasonable to believe his value has doubled since then.

Using those figures it will cost at least $800,000 - and perhaps even more than $1 million - to insure American Pharoah through the remainder of the year, though in all likelihood it is Ashford that is picking up that bill.

Yet beyond the hefty bills, what matters more is exactly what Baffert and Zayat have been saying all along: that American Pharoah will tell them when and if he's ready to race again.

As Zayat has said no numerous occasions, "The horse comes first."

What means is that there will be no more prep races for American Pharoah. They are way below his pay grade.

Given his new status in racing history, if American Pharoah is not ready to run as powerfully as he did in the Belmont Stakes or Preakness, rest assured he will not be placed in the starting gate. No one around him wants to see American Pharoah lose in a race that's merely a stepping stone for something bigger down the road, as we witnessed last September when California Chrome's first race after the Triple Crown was a weak sixth in the Pennsylvania Derby. It's just not worth it on any level. Zayat's colt has accomplished something so rare and means so much to so many people that to see him at anything but his best would be a travesty.

Given American Pharoah's immense popularity it may be hard for some people to accept all of that. Yet it's the proper path to follow.

So for now, all anyone can do is sit back and wait and hope that the Triple Crown grind has not worn down American Pharoah like has it so many other quality race horses of the past.

Leaving Kentucky, where he will ultimately begin a life at stud, and returning to his home base in California is a highly positive sign that American Pharoah will be given every chance to race again. And if he trains with his normal vigor, you can expect to see American Pharoah on the racetrack once again, though where that will happen has become a lightning rod for controversy.

Heading into this week, the front-runner seemed to be the $1 million Haskell at Monmouth Park on Aug. 2, which made all the sense in the world. At the Jersey Shore, racing's newest kingpin will find a racetrack that's ideally suited for his speed and a race that Baffert has already won on seven occasions in the home state of Zayat and his family.

The mere speculation that American Pharoah would run in the Haskell was enough to ignite a box-office surge that swallowed up every available seat for the mile and an eighth Grade 1 test.

But then on Thursday, Zayat delivered the shocking news on his Twitter account that, "right know Saratoga is in the lead. Head of Haskell."

Zayat posted the tweet prior to leaving the country for a business trip to Europe, complicating communication with him and leaving it unclear as to whether American Pharoah would run in the $600,000 Grade 2 Jim Dandy at Saratoga on Aug. 1 and then the $1.25 million Travers on Aug. 29 or just point toward the Grade 1 Travers.

Zayat's son Justin, the racing manager for Zayat Stables, messaged ESPN.com on Thursday that his father was "leaning towards Saratoga to make real history. We'll see as it gets closer." On Friday, Ahmed Zayat pulled back slightly, texting Tim Wilkin of the Albany Times-Union that "Everyone in the hunt still. Horse comes first. Every track wants to do what best for sport and give honor to our champ."

The latest turn of events was so sudden that when a New York Racing Association spokesperson was asked on Friday if they had head from Zayat about his plans, the response was basically that they knew only what they had read in reports.

And so it goes, and it will stay that way until the time comes when Zayat and Baffert announce that it's time for American Pharoah's life at stud to begin. When you're the first horse to win the Triple Crown in 37 years, your magnetism is off the scale and it's anything but surprising that so many people want to be part of one of his races and that tracks will open up war chests of gold in hopes of America's Pharoah to their venue.

How it all unfolds will be the dominant story in racing this year, and when it does indeed end there could be no better stage for American Pharoah's farewell than the $5 million Breeders' Cup Classic at Keeneland on Oct. 31.

Yet that's getting way too far into the future.

For now, as much as everyone would love to see American Pharoah race again, all anyone can do is to allow fate to play its hand in this melodrama and hope that everything does indeed go smoothly and racing's rock star returns to center stage.

The wait in the coming days for that to happen won't be easy. Yet after 37 years without a Triple Crown winner, what's a few weeks when the reward could be another chance to watch a star brighter than racing's galaxy has seen in years?