OCEANPORT, N.J. — Victor Espinoza was curious as he gave American Pharoah his head and let the colt slingshot around the far turn at Monmouth Park, a charming racetrack on the Jersey Shore. Espinoza peeked beneath one shoulder, glanced over the other, then narrowed his eyes between his colt’s ears and stared down the stretch.

The ears of American Pharoah, the Triple Crown champion, were wiggling.

“He was having fun, and so was I,” a barely winded Espinoza said after burying six rivals in the 48th running of the William Hill Haskell Invitational.

The official results will say that American Pharoah covered the mile and an eighth in 1 minute 47.95 seconds and finished two and a quarter lengths ahead of the second-place finisher, Keen Ice. But that does not begin to capture the transcendent performance. As American Pharoah loped down the stretch with Espinoza sitting atop him as still as a statue, the NBC announcer Larry Collmus said it better: “He could have won by 20.”

Indeed, there was little doubt the big bay colt was even stronger on Sunday than he was 57 days ago at Belmont Park when he became the 12th Triple Crown winner in history and the first since Affirmed in 1978.