ELMONT, N.Y. – Closers don’t win the Belmont Stakes. So goes second-level thinking these days in horse racing’s hive-mind. Like the debunked myth of tight turns at Pimlico in the Preakness, the oversimplified notion suggesting that the 1 1/2-mile Belmont favors late-rallying horses who have run out of ground at shorter distances has been kicked to the curb.
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DRF Past Performances
ELMONT, N.Y. – Handicappers will no longer have to guess who will be on the lead early in Saturday’s $1.5 million Belmont Stakes.
Gettysburg, whose best races have come when he was on the lead, was added to the Belmont Stakes field Monday, according to Elliott Walden, president, chief executive, and racing manager for WinStar Farm, which owns Gettysburg. WinStar also owns Creator and holds the breeding rights to Preakness winner Exaggerator, a pair of late runners who are both running in the Belmont.
ELMONT, N.Y. – After a Triple Crown bid by California Chrome in 2014 and then a Triple Crown sweep by American Pharoah last year, there will not be a horse going for the Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes when it is run for the 148th time on Saturday here at Belmont Park. But what is lost in drama will certainly be made up for in numbers, as it appears that 12 horses are set to take on the expected favorite, Exaggerator, who will try to add the Belmont to a résumé that includes a Preakness victory and a second-place finish in the Kentucky Derby.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Keith Desormeaux, the trainer of Preakness winner Exaggerator, said he is proud that his brother Kent, the Hall of Fame jockey, has sought help for an alcohol problem and is hopeful that he will be ready to perform at his best when he rides Exaggerator in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes.
“His focus should be better,” Keith Desormeaux said Monday at Belmont Park. “I don’t quite know what to expect. I imagine it’s a change for the better. How can it not?”
Two of this year’s most exciting freshman sires will have representatives on a major stage this week, as Belmont cards a pair of juvenile stakes in the Tremont and the Astoria.
In Thursday’s Astoria for 2-year-old fillies, Bode’s Dream immediately steps into stakes company off a 3 3/4-length debut victory May 11 at Gulfstream Park. The filly was the first winner for classic-placed Grade 1 winner Bodemeister, a commercial leader of his class.
ELMONT, N.Y. – Exaggerator lost his left hind shoe while galloping on the Belmont Park main track Monday morning, but he was due to be shod before the Belmont Stakes on Saturday, and it just so happened that his blacksmith was due to arrive on Monday, so new plates were to be affixed prior to his scheduled workout Tuesday.
Memories of his outstanding turf mare Wonder Again are everywhere for trainer Jimmy Toner at Belmont Park this week.
Not only did Toner saddle Time and Motion to win Wonder Again’s namesake stakes race on Sunday, he will saddle Recepta, from the same family that produced Wonder Again, in the Grade 1 Just a Game Stakes on the Belmont undercard on Saturday. Time and Motion and Recepta are both homebreds for the Phillips Racing of Darby Dan Farm owner John Phillips, who also owns Wonder Again.
On Friday, Belmont Park will card the Rags to Riches Invitational, named to honor the 2007 Belmont Stakes winner who became the first filly in more than a century to win America’s oldest and longest classic when she outdueled eventual two-time Horse of the Year Curlin for the victory.
Belmont Park
Weather: Clear
Main track: Sloppy
Training track: Good
Temp.: 72
ELMONT, N.Y. – You know it’s another slow day on the Belmont Stakes watch when the most excitement here Monday morning was trying to figure out what track Creator would be going to and then getting there in time to see his final blowout prior to Saturday’s race.
