On June 13, 1953, Alfred G. Vanderbilt Jr. watched his homebred Native Dancer win the Belmont Stakes, eking out a nose victory to complete the third leg of Thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown. He’d won three weeks earlier, too, at Pimlico, but had lost the Kentucky Derby. One might have forgiven Vanderbilt for a bittersweet sadness…
When Smarty Jones ran for the Triple Crown in 2004, spectators at Belmont Park faced long lines for betting, bathrooms, and concessions; they waited hours for Long Island Rail Road trains after the races were over. When Big Brown ran for the Triple Crown in 2008, spectators sat in extreme heat and humidity and the…
When horses break from the gate for the 147th Belmont Stakes on Saturday, they will do so directly in front of tens of thousands of people, on their feet on the crowded apron and in the clubhouse and grandstand. They will circle the enormous Belmont oval, the only one of its kind in the United…
NYRA president and CEO Chris Kay appeared on the popular local news channel NY1 to talk about the plans for this weekend’s Belmont Stakes. Kay said that he thought that last year’s announced attendance of 102,199 was far short of the actual attendance, which he estimated as closer to 115,000. Of Wednesday’s post position draw…
California Chrome didn’t win the Triple Crown, but within hours of his failed bid to make racing history, the New York Racing Association was nonetheless declaring Belmont Stakes day a success, pointing to high attendance and record-setting handle numbers. Official attendance was 102,199, lower than the announced (and oft-questioned) attendance of 120,139 in 2004, Smarty…
Every morning at 5:30, Kelvin Pahal arrives at work. Rain or shine, hot or cold, he travels the five minutes from his home in Queens Village to the backstretch of Belmont Park, where for the next five hours he rides horses, preparing them to race. The life of an exercise rider can be fairly routine,…
The official announced attendance for the 2004 Belmont Stakes, the year the much-loved Smarty Jones attempted to become the 12th winner of the Triple Crown, was 120,319, breaking the old record of 103,222, set two years previous, when War Emblem, like Smarty Jones, failed to win the third leg of horse racing’s greatest quest after winning the first…
Belmont Park: The Grade I, $1.5 million Belmont Stakes at 1 ½ miles #1 Medal Count: Turf and Polytrack specialist is being overlooked off his eighth-place finish in the Kentucky Derby, but go back and watch the replay again and see all the trouble he had while full of run off the far turn; it’s…
On May 21, the New York State Gaming Commission released the security procedures for the horses entered in four of the six Grade I races on Belmont Day: the Manhattan, the Met Mile, the Ogden Phipps, and the Belmont Stakes. Such procedures are put in place for races worth more than $1 million, according to…
In early 2009, trainer Jimmy Jerkens was flying high – if such a phrase could be used to describe a man better known for shying from the spotlight than for grabbing headlines. He had married his high school sweetheart the year before, and he had a barn full of fast horses, including a brilliant colt…
Brooklyn Backstretch 