BALTIMORE — Even without a Triple Crown on the line, the upcoming Belmont Stakes is one of the most anticipated events in the history of American thoroughbred racing.
That’s because it’s being run at Saratoga Race Course for the first time, part of a two-year hiatus in upstate New York while Belmont Park, the event’s longstanding home in New York City, is torn down and rebuilt.
“When you’re in sports, you get to do these unique things, and having a Belmont up in Saratoga, that’s pretty unique for us,” said David O’Rourke, the president and CEO of the New York Racing Association. “Everyone up there has leaned so far into this event that it’s just really cool.
“It’s hard to put a word to the level of excitement up there except the fact that everyone’s all in.”
And that probably includes Preakness Stakes champion Seize the Grey, who ended Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan’s Triple Crown bid with a wire-to-wire victory Saturday at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. His 88-year-old trainer, U.S. Racing Hall of Fame member D. Wayne Lukas, said it was likely Seize the Grey would enter the Belmont on June 8.
It’s being reduced to 1 1/4 miles from the usual “test of the champion” 1 1/2-mile distance because of the circumference of the track at Saratoga. At that distance, the race would have started on a turn, so the decision was made to shorten it, which could entice more owners and trainers to let their horses run.
“It’s a whole different deal,” Lukas said. “We’ll get new faces. There are some guys sitting in the wings. I’m sure that Todd (Pletcher) and Chad (Brown), with the depth they’ve got in their stables, will be involved. The fact that it’s a mile and a quarter, I think it makes it more enticing.”
Bob Baffert, who has trained two Triple Crown winners, approves of the move away from a longer distance not typically run by 3-year-olds or even many older horses.
“You really don’t want to send a horse a mile and a half,” Baffert said. “They only do it one time in their life. … A mile and a quarter, it’ll be fine.”
O’Rourke said the race will revert to 1 1/2 miles when it returns to the new version of Belmont Park in 2026. Given how much Lukas talks about his next crop of horses, he undoubtedly will show interest in yearlings born in 2023 for the Belmont’s downstate return.
For now, the question is how much the final leg of this year’s Triple Crown series will be a rematch of sorts from the Kentucky Derby or the Preakness Stakes. Brown-trained Sierra Leone, who finished second by a nose at Louisville’s Churchill Downs on May 4, could run, and so could Mystik Dan.
Trainer Kenny McPeek is shipping the Kentucky Derby winner and Preakness runner-up to Saratoga but will wait a week to 10 days to make a decision. On Friday, Baffert seemed to rule out the Belmont for Muth because the Preakness morning-line favorite got sick upon arriving in Baltimore and probably would not be able to heal in time to train for next month’s race in New York.
There will not be any shortage of interest in taking part in a Belmont at Saratoga, which has been around since 1863 and is one of the most venerable venues in horse racing. The field won’t match the Kentucky Derby’s 20 horses, but it will almost certainly be bigger than the eight in the Preakness.
“The Belmont field, it’s sort of erratic, and it depends on a lot of other factors,” O’Rourke said. “I think it’s going to be an exceptionally deep field. It will be a big field, but it’ll be exceptionally deep is my projection at this point in time.”