THE BELMONT STAKES by The Wizard on Saturday, June 06, 2009

The Belmont Stakes is by far the toughest of the three Triple Crown races to win. Horses running in the Kentucky Derby are asked to travel 1 ¼ miles for the first time in their careers. In the Preakness they cut back a sixteenth of mile. But The Belmont Stakes, has been called "The Test of Champions", because, those horses, still standing after the rigors of the Triple Crown, are asked to travel 1 ½ miles. The race starts in front of the stands. The gate is positioned right by the finish line. Horse s must run around the entire track once, with its wide sweeping turns and over Belmont dirt, which can often be deep and tiring. That is why Belmont is referred to as "Big Sandy". Horses who ran in the Derby and Preakness, have only three weeks to recover in time, to be at their best for the third leg of racing’s Triple Crown.

It takes an extraordinary horse to win all three legs. There have been only eleven horses to have accomplished this great feat. Sir Barton was the first to do it in 1919. The forties proved to be the first decade which produced four Triple Crown winners. Whirlaway (1941), Count Fleet (1943), Assault (1946), and Citation (1948). It took twenty five years for the next Triple Crown winner, when Secretariat won by the length of the stretch in 1973. Four years later Seattle Slew won it, and in 1978 Affirmed overcame an intense stretch battle to narrowly out game his nemesis, Alydar. Now, thirty one years later, there has not been a horse to win all three races. There have been forty five horses who have won two out of the three legs of the Triple Crown. Twenty one horses won the Derby and the Preakness, only to fall short in the Belmont Stakes. There are very few races all year that are run at 1 ½ miles and beyond. Except for those three year olds who run in the Belmont, you will only see older gladiators run these marathon distances.

Calvin Borel has a chance to be a Triple Crown winner as a jockey if he wins the Belmont aboard Mine That Bird, whom he rode to victory in the Kentucky Derby. He rode the filly, Rachel Alexandra, to a game victory in the Preakness. According to Borel in Monday’s Daily Racing Form, he stated, “We’re going to win it, no questions asked”. He is the hottest rider in the country at the present time and has an abundance of confidence. If Borel is so sure Mine That Bird cannot lose the Belmont, then we should sell all our stocks, empty out our bank accounts, and break our piggy banks, to run to the windows, to be the first one in line to collect. Mine That bird is a deserving favorite, as he has accomplished more in two Triple Crown races than any of his opposition. But we must not forget that he was 50-1 when he won the Derby, closing up a gold rail while relishing the Churchill slop. The Bird was 6-1 in the Preakness when he ran second. He did have trouble in the race and probably would have won, if the race was a bit longer, but the truth of the matter is that Rachel Alexandra did all the dirty work for horses to close into, as a result of the quick early fractions she set. Borel should take a chapter out of the Richard Dutrow Jr. Holy Scriptures, thou shall never assume that you can predict destiny, especially in thoroughbred horse racing. Dutow stated before the Belmont, that Big Brown was a “lock”, and everyone else is running for second money. Obviously something went amiss that day with Big Brown, as he pulled up early in the race. Borel does not have much experience riding at Belmont Park, let alone traveling 1 ½ miles on horseback over "Big Sandy". Mine That Bird has excelled since being taken well off the pace and making one sustained late run. This type of running style is usually at a disadvantage in the Belmont Stakes, especially if the early fractions are not fast, and if the track is speed favoring.