Horse racing’s Triple Crown will look different this year from start to finish.
The Belmont Stakes will be run before the Kentucky Derby and Preakness for the first time and take place at a shorter distance. It will lead off the Triple Crown on June 20 in New York with no fans in attendance and at a distance of 1 1/8 miles instead of the 1 1/2-mile “test of the champion” that has been the race’s trademark for nearly a century.
“I’m just happy we get to run,” two-time Triple Crown-winning trainer Bob Baffert said. “I’m just fortunate that they didn’t cancel any of them. A couple months ago, it didn’t look good.” The Belmont is only being run two weeks after it was scheduled, but the shorter distance changes the complexion of the race and the Triple Crown. It has been run at 1 1/2 miles each year dating to 1926 and last ran at 1 1/8 miles in 1894.“The Belmont, running after that, the `test of champions’ is: `How tough is your horse? How can he handle it?”’ said Baffert, who trained 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah and 2018 winner Justify.
“You wouldn’t get that many horses going a mile and a half right now,” Baffert said. “We would’ve gone a mile and a quarter, mile and a half. I don’t care what the distance was. We’re going to be there.” “We didn’t have dates for a while. Every day seemed like a week,” O’Rourke said. “As long as we were able to start at Belmont the first week of June, we thought we could hold to this June 20 date with a different race in a sense of distance and whatnot.”
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