The Belmont Festival at Saratoga

Say what you will about NYRA—and I will be the first to say what I will about NYRA—they did put together a series of superior races to surround the 2026 Belmont Stakes at Saratoga. It was a horseplayer's trip to heaven.

The "festival" started Wednesday, with what looked like empty stands, no doubt because of the day of the week, and the huge expense of getting a seat with a back. NYRA loves to now hawk its seats "with backs," and make you pay through the nose for plopping your backside and back in one of them.

For a while now NYRA has been clustering its Grade 1 races to be run on the same day. It does create a great card and a handicapper's challenge. Saturday's Belmont card had 6 Grade 1s, 5 in a row, culminating with the Belmont Stakes. There was also a Grade III on the card.

All week long I liked Golden Tempo, and told anyone who asked—or even who didn't ask—that he was the one. All week long the analysts mentioned that Golden Tempo wasn't going to get the fast pace of the Derby to close into, and without it wasn't going to win. End of story.

To me, this was hollow. Races are rarely copies of races run before. They all have different dynamics because they all have a different combination of entrants. Sure Golden Temple wasn't going to get a fast pace—no one in the Belmont was going to get a fast pace—but that didn't mean that the horse and rider couldn't adapt to and make use of what was being dealt. And they did.

The horse already proved they could easily go 1¼ miles. The Bernardini mare and Curlin sire guaranteed ability for distance. The horse skipped the Preakness, so Golden Tempo had 5 weeks of rest. A nice time to recover from the Derby. The connections were still there: an up and coming competent trainer in Cherie DeVaux, and the jockey José Ortiz should discourage no one.

The fractions were pedestrian; the final time was a calendar, but they tell you time only counts in prison. Sure Golden Tempo was last throughout most of the race, but never far back. There was a rugby scrum of horses that hit the final turn and basically it was several horses' race. The chart caller has Golden Tempo, and the second place finisher Commandant, brushing more times than a house painter. But well inside the sixteenth pole Golden Tempo asserted themselves to win going away by 1­¼ lengths.­­

And there you now have more history. A female trainer winning two-thirds of the Triple Crown, overshadowing Cherie's win with Englishman in the Grade 1 Woody Stephens, a 5 length win in a blistering time of 1:202/5, set up by an ungodly 434/5 half.

Cherie's getting the horses now from big shot stables. And this is just the beginning. The former female body builder's frame is still evident under the sedate clothing of a trainer in the boxes at Saratoga. 

And NYRA will now gloat about the festival. It shows their hand for the future when the new Belmont opens in September and the Belmont Stakes will return to its home in 2027 to be run at its usual test of champions distance of 1½ miles

NYRA will package its admissions with the need to buy seats for multiple days in addition to the Belmont Stakes. These people won't show up for those preliminary dates, and the stands with seats "with backs" will be empty. There will continue to be an onerous General Admission fee of something at least equal to the $90 they got for this year's Belmont at Saratoga, up from the prior year's $75.

Thank god for Fox Sports and Rupert Murdoch. He loves racing as much as he loves women. Fox Sports assembles a terrific cast of analyst/personalities to bring the viewer racing.

It was great to hear the former jockey Richard Migliore tell of when he was born in 1964 that they had to run the Belmont at Aqueduct because they were then rebuilding the Belmont that reopened in 1968, the Belmont I first went to on Belmont Day in 1968.

NYRA can do all they want to attract a crowd, but it's not a gambling crowd. And its not a consistent crowd outside of the big day of the Belmont. All the guys holding beer cans and the ladies with short skirts and fascinator headgear do not add to the handle. The handle is coming in from the betting whales and the simulcasting computer assisted wagering. (CAW)

At 77, I'm not one for the crowds, or the expense of "being there." There is no Senior Citizen discount, so I'll wait for a quiet Saturday or Sunday to go to the new Belmont and hope to get in for an unexorbitant amount and maybe even get a seat with a back that doesn't set me back a sum so great there is nothing left to bet with.

I suspect NYRA still wants me to bet, right?

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