ELMONT, N.Y. – Though Dallas Stewart is bringing the Kentucky Derby runner-up to the Belmont Stakes for the second consecutive year, the trainer believes the similarities between Commanding Curve and Golden Soul end there.

Stewart said that Commanding Curve, second to California Chrome at odds of 37-1 in the May 3 Kentucky Derby, came out of his effort better than did Golden Soul, second to Orb at odds of 34-1 in last year’s Derby. Golden Soul, who like Commanding Curve skipped the Preakness, finished ninth in the Belmont Stakes as the sixth betting choice in the 14-horse field.

In 2000, Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas won the Belmont Stakes with Commendable, a colt who had raced in the Kentucky Derby and then skipped the Preakness.

Lukas has been a trend-setter in many ways during his legendary career, but little could he know what he was starting that day. In the 14 runnings of the Belmont since 2000, a total of seven horses have done what Commendable did: lose the Derby, skip the Preakness, win the Belmont.

EAST BOSTON, Mass.- There will be no live racing on Tuesdays at Suffolk Downs in the month of June after the Massachusetts Gaming Commission on Thursday approved a request by track management to scratch those dates and keep to the current three days per week schedule.

“The existing horse supply isn’t what it needs to be,” Dr. Jennifer Durenberger, the MGC’s director of racing, said in testimony to the five commissioners while adding that the dates would be subject to being rescheduled later in the season if the horse population increases.

He thought he was home free.

“I’m gonna win the Triple Crown!” jockey Gary Stevens said he thought to himself. He was in the homestretch of the 1997 Belmont Stakes on Silver Charm, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, and had put away arch rival Free House. The race, the Triple Crown, was his.

“And then I saw this shadow well away from me,” Stevens recalled. “I knew someone was coming.”

It was Touch Gold, who overtook Silver Charm inside the sixteenth pole – another Triple Crown bid denied.

NBC Sports and its parent network will show 16 hours of Belmont Stakes-related coverage beginning June 4 and through the race June 7, double the amount it had originally been planning, the network said Wednesday.

The first cases of vesicular stomatitis in the U.S. this year have been confirmed in five horses in southwest Texas, the Texas Animal Health Commission announced Wednesday. The horses are in Kinney County, near Del Rio. There are no racetrack facilities operating in Kinney County.

VS is a viral infection characterized by lesions that can be found in such areas as a horse’s mouth and hoof area on the coronary band. The lesions can take two to three weeks to heal. In some cases, horses will refuse feed and water because of pain caused by the blisters. 

It was a rough winter for the New York Racing Association in terms of business and perception, but upper management is hoping for a turnaround this spring, buoyed by the possibility of having one of its biggest days ever in the June 7 Belmont Stakes.

Eight 3-year-olds, including Global View and Storming Inti, the one-two finishers May 3 in the Grade 2 American Turf Stakes at Churchill, were entered Wednesday in the $500,000 Penn Mile.

Add to the Global View-Storming Inti rematch two more high-quality sophomore grass horses, Bobby’s Kitten and Divine Oath, and the second edition of the Penn Mile has even more substance than a gold inaugural running last year, when Rydilluc beat Charming Kitten and Jack Milton.

Two new $100,000 stakes highlight the summer racing schedule at the Northern California fairs. A total of 19 stakes worth $1,145,000 will be run at six fair tracks.

When California Chrome heads to the track every morning at Belmont Park, perhaps “I Got You Babe” should be played over the loudspeakers, or maybe someone can run up to Alan Sherman and say, “Phil? Phil?” because for the past week his training routine has been so similar as to invite comparisons to the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day,” in which Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, keeps living the same day over and over and …