By historical standards, the eight-runner field in the Belmont Stakes is already small. It’s even smaller considering three entrants are field-fillers with little more than a prayer.
Daily Racing Form handicapper Mike Welsch's picks and analysis for the 153rd Belmont Stakes.
Daily Racing Form handicapper Dan Illman's picks and analysis for the 153rd Belmont Stakes.
Daily Racing Form handicapper Marcus Hersh's picks and analysis for the 153rd Belmont Stakes.
Daily Racing Form handicapper Brad Free's picks and analysis for the 153rd Belmont Stakes.
Daily Racing Form handicapper Mike Beer's picks and analysis for the 153rd Belmont Stakes.
In the Preakness, Rombauer inhaled pace prompters Medina Spirt and Midnight Bourbon to win going away. The manner in which he won, and the way in which he's trained has Michael McCarthy, trainer of Rombauer, confident of a performance as good, if not better, in the $1.5 million Belmont Stakes on Saturday.
Brad Cox woke up May 1, 2021, thinking he'd win his first Kentucky Derby later that day. Mandaloun and Essential Quality, Cox's Derby runners, finished second and fourth. Cox didn't win his first Derby. Or maybe he did. He will seek his first Belmont Stakes win on Saturday with morning-line favorite Essential Quality.
In an era in which trainers prefer to give their horses far more time between starts than their predecessors of a half-century ago, the Belmont Stakes was won 10 times between 2000 and 2017 by horses who ran Kentucky Derby weekend and not again until the Belmont.
Rombauer will go down as trainer Michael McCarthy's first winner of a Triple Crown race. As a longtime assistant to trainer Todd Pletcher, however, this trail for McCarthy has not been one less traveled.
