Trainer Steve Asmussen won his first Belmont Stakes on Saturday, and he kept wanting to relive the moment over and over Saturday night and into the wee hours of Sunday morning. “I woke up every 15 minutes to watch the replay,” Asmussen said at his Belmont Park barn Sunday morning.
The two-hour broadcast of the Belmont Stakes on NBC Saturday drew a 4.3 rating, the network said Sunday, down 6.5 percent from the rating of the same broadcast in 2013, when no Triple Crown was on the line as well.
Although we don’t have another Triple Crown winner like American Pharoah to celebrate, Creator’s victory in the Belmont Stakes does set up an interesting second half of the year for this group of 3-year-olds.
It opened heaven and earth as soon as the 148th Belmont Stakes was over. That’s the kind of pull Creator had on Saturday. Creator, a troubled 13th in the Kentucky Derby five weeks ago, just nosed out Destin at the end of the Grade 1, $1.5 million Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park, providing trainer Steve Asmussen with the biggest win of the year for him in a campaign that is shaping up far more celebratory than two years ago.
Garett Skiba has won the inaugural Belmont Betting Challenge. Skiba is believed to be the first handicapping-contest participant to win six figures on three separate occasions, having finished third at the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Betting Challenge and second five weeks ago at the inaugural Kentucky Derby Betting Challenge.
The rain came too late for Exaggerator. A proven commodity in the slop, Exaggerator was less than his best over a fast track in Saturday’s $1.5 million Belmont Stakes, fading to 11th in the 13-horse field, 14 lengths behind the winner, Creator. He was the 7-5 favorite.
Exaggerator, the Preakness winner and Kentucky Derby runner-up, is clearly the most accomplished runner in the Belmont Stakes field, and for that reason he will be the heavy favorite. He also will be overbet and vulnerable stretching out to 1 1/2 miles, which makes him a horse I cannot select on top.
We took a look at both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, with an eye toward how some of the contenders matched up to similar runners in the recent history of those races. Let’s do the same here with the Belmont Stakes.
The Belmont Gold Cup/Belmont Stakes double is a tough wager to have much confidence in since we’re dealing with a 16-furlong turf race and a 12-furlong dirt race. Considering that neither of these races will be contested at a distance that is common here in the United States, a great deal of projecting needs to be done when trying to smoke out horses who are best suited to stay these marathon distances. Below I’ve laid out the horses I’m most interested in, along with the odds I believe would represent fair value on each runner.
Clocker: The following are impressions of the 13 Belmont starters from observations made here over the past two weeks.
