Time for the Belmont Stakes, always a good day for horse racing, whether or not there is a Triple Crown on the line. New Yorkers, grown blasé toward racing, still flock to the track in support of their classic, taking full pleasure in a setting that drips with history.

Animal Kingdom deserves to be the favorite in the 143rd Belmont Stakes on Saturday. He was a dominant winner of a cleanly run Kentucky Derby, outfinished the rest of the field while narrowly failing to catch Shackleford in the Preakness, has trained well since, and appears to be sitting on another big effort. He soundly beat 7 of his 11 Belmont opponents in the Derby, figures to catch Shackleford this time with an extra five-sixteenths of a mile at his disposal, and the four who didn’t run in the Derby look hopelessly overmatched on paper.

LAS VEGAS – With the Triple Crown wrapping up, this is the time of year when the race books here turn their attention to hosting handicapping tournaments.

There are some notable exceptions such as the Fall Classic at the Orleans, the Pick the Ponies tourneys at the Hilton in the spring and fall, etc., but they love to run tournaments of all sizes here in the summer to fill the books before football season does (or at least we hope that’s the case with the NFL labor dispute, but that’s a topic for another day).

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Hansel took the 1991 Belmont by a head over hard-charging Strike the Gold.

About the only thing that gives New York racing an inferiority complex is the Kentucky Derby, which is why, in the face of the Derby’s universal appeal as an American sporting institution, the Belmont Stakes was labeled at some point the “Test of the Champion,” which will be run Saturday for the 143rd time.

There is a rigid scale by which the level of excitement is measured when it comes to anticipation for the Belmont Stakes, and no amount of public relations can shake the equation. In descending order, the various possibilities look like this, beginning with Level 1 (also called Code Secretariat), in which a superstar romps in the Derby and Preakness and all that’s left for the Belmont is the giddy coronation:

Level 2 – Unbeaten over-achiever comes to town with chance to make history in Triple Crown (see Seattle Slew, Smarty Jones).

Illegal medication and what to do about it is buzzing again, with the arrival of hot weather.

Racing Commissioners International want furosemide (aka Salix or Lasix) on race day banned in five years.

Rep. Ed Whitfield from Kentucky and Sen. Tom Udall from New Mexico have introduced federal legislation to end the use of performance-enhancing drugs in horse racing.

During a memorable 2010, Mike Smith spent the first week of June winning the Belmont Stakes for the first time, aboard Drosselmeyer, and then working Zenyatta six furlongs at Hollywood Park in anticipation of her pending start in the Vanity Handicap.

That was a pretty good week.

It may seem premature by definition even to be thinking about Eclipse Awards during the first week of June, less than halfway through the racing calendar. On the other hand, recent history suggests that a victory by either Animal Kingdom or Shackleford in Saturday’s 142nd Belmont Stakes will come close to cementing the 3-year-old championship for either colt.

Memo to Hollywood Park stewards Scott Chaney, Tom Ward and Kim Sawyer:

Get a good night’s sleep Friday night, because on Saturday afternoon Twirling Candy comes back to the races in the Californian, and you know what that means. Something very weird is almost guaranteed to happen.

What’s that? Bed time is past midnight Friday? Right, there’s night racing, with the card ending at 10:30, plus who knows how long Tom Ward might hang out at the Iration concert afterwards (these are the guys from Hawaii who have proven there’s more than one reggae song).

At 2:30 last Sunday afternoon in Arlington Heights, after an hour-long delay while a ferocious storm front assaulted the area with lightning, wind, and rain, seven riders went postward for the second race at Arlington Park. They made it around and then, on their way back to the room, the Arlington paddock lit up with another flash of lightning.