Belmont still the top test for 3-year-olds
As far as I am concerned, the Belmont Stakes is still “The Test of the Champion.”
The Belmont, final and oldest of the Triple Crown events, will be run for the 149th time on June 10.
At this writing, however, Kentucky
Derby winner Always Dreaming and Preakness Stakes winner Cloud Computing are not considered definite starters.
I hope that pair, along with Classic Empire, are in the starting gate for the famous race at 1 ½ miles.
Classic Empire is considered definite, and kudos to owner John C. Oxley and trainer Mark Casse on that score.
They’ve got a gifted colt, the champion of the crop, and they’re
out to defend that title after finishing fourth in the Kentucky Derby and second in the Preakness.
In this year of wild swings at the top of the 3- year- old division, racing fans deserve a Belmont Stakes that holds the possibility of settling accounts.
The Belmont honors a family that has given much to thoroughbred racing.
August Belmont was a financier born in Germany who learned the banking business in the famous house of the Rothschilds. He came to New York in 1837 at age 20, and when he took up racing in the 1860s, the sport needed a man of his stature.
His son, August Belmont II, bred Man o’ War, and is in the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame as a Pillar of the Turf in the first class of 2013.
From Fenian in 1869, to Caveat in 1983, the Belmont family won six editions of the race.
Soon after Cloud Computing won the Preakness, the short-selling of the Belmont Stakes was underway.
Since there will be no Triple Crown winner this year, goes the argument, there is no reason to get excited about the Belmont Stakes.
Pretty soon we’ll be getting another dose of those stale comments about how unfair the Triple Crown is, and how the Belmont Stakes is too long at a mile and a half. Seriously?
You mean, we should not be celebrating the oldest American classic for what it is, and what it represents in history?
At some point in their careers, the best 3-year- olds should be required to display the stamina needed to win the Belmont Stakes.
What bothers me most about all this is that it
cheapens a race that should not need a Triple Crown on the line to be important.
Since formal voting began in 1936, there have been 28 winners of the Belmont Stakes who earned the title as champion 3-year-old and who did not win the Triple Crown.
Eight of them are in the Hall of Fame.
There was a time when participating in the Belmont, and hopefully winning, meant a trainer had displayed the ability to get a thoroughbred to win at 1 ½ miles.
To win a race that offered the fairest, and most demanding challenge at the end of the annual Triple Crown hunt that is several months in duration.
Let that be the case on June 10.