belmont

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Golden Tempo closed out the Triple Crown season Saturday the same way he began it: In the winner’s circle.

The circumstances were different from the Kentucky Derby, when the late-running son of Curlin was helped by a hot pace that tired out the front-runners.

There was no such setup in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, but Golden Tempo showed he didn’t need it.

Ridden again by Jose Ortiz, the Derby champion stormed into the stretch and outfinished Commandment to win a thrilling stretch duel by 1¼ lengths at Saratoga Race Course.

“Golden Tempo is amazing. Jose is amazing,” said trainer Cherie DeVaux, who added to her historic win as the first woman to capture the Derby by becoming the first woman to win two Triple Crown races.

“Amazing feeling,” she said on Fox Sports.

Golden Tempo was sent off as the co-fourth choice with Commandment at 6-1 and returned $14 for a $2 win ticket. Renegade, the Derby runner-up, finished third as the 17-10 favorite and Chief Wallabee, the second choice at 5-1, was fourth. The rest of the finishing order: Emerging Market, Growth Equity, Vitruvian Man, Ottinho and Powershift.

This marked the second straight year the Derby winner also captured the Belmont after skipping the Preakness, with Golden Tempo following Sovereignty. It’s the fifth time in the past six years that a horse used that formula to win this race.

Could Golden Tempo have won the Triple Crown?

“It’s not something I want to think about,” DeVaux said. “We made our decision and he won today and we’re going to be happy about that.”

Trainer Cherie DeVaux lifts the August Belmont Trophy as she stands next to winning jockey Jose Ortiz, left, after Golden Tempo’s victory in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.

(Al Bello / Getty Images)

Golden Tempo, a homebred of owners Phipps Stable and St. Elias Stables, won for the fourth time in six starts. He earned $1.2 million from the $2-million purse to push his career total past $4.6 million.

Despite his victory five weeks ago in Kentucky, the general feeling about Golden Tempo entering the Belmont was pessimism. Not one of the 19 experts surveyed in Saturday’s Daily Racing Form selected him to win, with just two picking him second. The consensus was he would not finish in the top four.

The lack of pace was one reason, and sure enough, the race played out pretty much as expected, with Renegade’s stablemate, Powershift, dawdling through the first six furlongs in 1 minute, 12.38 seconds, about a second and a half slower than the same distance for the Derby (1:10.90).

Golden Tempo, ridden by jockey Jose Ortiz, crosses the finish line to win the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.

(Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)

As he was in the Derby, Golden Tempo was last for more than half the race, but Saturday he trailed eight horses instead of 17 and never was more than about eight lengths behind the leader.

Growth Equity, who had been stalking Powershift, took the lead as the field turned into the stretch, but he soon was passed by Chief Wallabee. Before the field had run another furlong, though, Golden Tempo had moved around Renegade to the front. Commandment was on Golden Tempo’s outside but was unable to get past in the final furlong. In fact, the winner was pulling away as they reached the finish.

The final time wasn’t fast, 2:03.49 for 1¼ miles at Saratoga, which was hosting the Belmont for the third and final year while Belmont Park is rebuilt. The race started about five minutes after rain began falling in upstate New York.

Baffert’s Nysos dominates Met Mile

Nysos crosses the finish line to win the 133rd running of the Met Mile at Saratoga on Saturday.

(Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)

The afternoon did not begin well for trainer Bob Baffert, who saw his top 3-year-old, Crude Velocity, routed by DeVaux’s Englishman in the Woody Stephens and his leading sprinter, Imagination, come up empty in the True North. But Nysos, the best horse in Baffert’s barn, salvaged the day — and then some — with a dominant win over Journalism and five others in the Grade 1 Met Mile.

“I’ve always thought he was one of the best horses in training and today he showed it,” Baffert said of the 7-5 favorite, who returned $4.94 after clocking 1:34.85, just 0.13 off the track record.

The victory was not without an anxious moment or two. Jockey Flavien Prat rushed Nysos to the lead out of the gate, but when he was joined on the pace by Antiquarian, Saudi Crown and Knightsbridge, the jockey dropped Nysos back to fourth place at the midway point.

“When he took him back I just thought, ‘I hope he knows what he’s doing,’” Baffert said.

Not surprisingly, Prat did. After Knightsbridge passed Antiquarian on the far turn, Prat took Nysos around those two as they moved into the stretch and pulled away. Knightsbridge was four lengths back in second with Journalism another three-quarters of a length behind in third.

“It felt like down the backside, the pressure from the outside never really stopped,” Prat said. “I figured I had to give him a chance, knowing he was carrying 126 [pounds] and he hasn’t run for [four] months, and it just played out good. When I tipped him out, he gave me a great run.”

It was the eighth win in 10 lifetime starts for Nysos, a 5-year-old son of Nyquist. He was second in the two defeats.

“He’s one of the best horses I’ve ever trained,” Baffert said.

The victory earned Nysos a berth in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile in October at Keeneland, but the horse won that race last year and Baffert has a bigger prize in mind.

“We’re going for the Classic,” he said, mentioning the Aug. 22 Pacific Classic at Del Mar as a possible race to bridge the gap between now and Oct. 31.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — One thing about the Triple Crown: Fans do not get cheated, at least when it comes to the number of races on the big day.

Just as Churchill Downs did for the Kentucky Derby and Laurel Park did two weeks later for the Preakness, Saratoga Race Course has scheduled 14 races Saturday, highlighted by the Belmont Stakes. It’s the third and final year the Belmont will be run at the upstate New York track while Belmont Park is being rebuilt.

While Laurel started its card at 7:30 a.m. PDT, the Saratoga card follows Churchill’s schedule and begins at 8 a.m. PDT, or 11 a.m. on the East Coast. And, just like the other two headline races, the Belmont is scheduled to start at 4:04 p.m. PDT, or 7:04 p.m. EDT.

It will be the 13th race of the day, with official post time listed at four minutes past the hour.

The biggest difference Saturday from the Derby and Preakness is where fans can watch the races. Fox, not NBC, has the rights to the Belmont.

The first seven races can be seen on FS2 as part of the New York Racing Assn.’s regular “America’s Day at the Races” program, which starts at 7:30 a.m. PDT and continues until noon. The eighth race, at 12:25 p.m. PDT, also will be covered by that crew but will air on Fox.

The network’s official Belmont show begins at 1 p.m. and continues until 4:30. Curt Menefee again is the host, with analysts Tom Amoss and Richard Migliore, plus handicappers Jonathan Kinchen and Chris Fallica, with other contributors such as Charissa Thompson and Tom Rinaldi.

Thompson also will host an alternate telecast geared for horseplayers from 1-4:30 on FS1.

The last of Belmont’s 14 races is set to begin just past 5 p.m. PDT, or 8 p.m. in the East. But don’t worry … FS2 will carry that and it won’t interrupt the Belmont Stakes post-race coverage.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — The Belmont Stakes is less than 34 hours away, and Cherie DeVaux is feeling stressed.

Not about the race. DeVaux has done what she can do to prepare her 3-year-old colt, Golden Tempo, for Saturday’s third leg of the Triple Crown. Questions about post position, track bias, even the increasing threat of potentially severe thunderstorms before the evening post time (4:04 PDT, Fox) are brushed aside because, as she said, those are all out of a trainer’s control.

No, it’s her makeup bag.

She forgot to bring it with her to Saratoga Race Course and she has a Fox Sports TV interview scheduled right after she finishes speaking with a reporter inside her small office adjacent to Barn 83.

“I have to be on national TV, and I have not a stitch of makeup on right now, all the while having to try to make sure I enter my horses and not forget and mess that up too badly,” DeVaux said, smiling. “So it’s been a lot.”

But DeVaux is not complaining, because it’s been a lot since 7:10 p.m. EDT on May 2, the exact time Golden Tempo crossed the finish line first in the Kentucky Derby. And those 35 days have been filled with many great experiences.

Golden Tempo’s trainer Cherie DeVaux kisses a trophy after winning the Kentucky Derby.

(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

The coolest?

“We won the Derby,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s anything cooler than that.

“There have been a lot of really neat opportunities,” she added. “A lot of different people have reached out. But you know, just the whole experience itself.”

Winning the Derby changes anyone’s life, but it’s magnified when you make history, as DeVaux did by becoming the first female trainer to win the world’s most famous horse race. It began a whirlwind that included more than 65 TV interviews and dozens upon dozens of text messages and phone calls.

And, truthfully, there was one experience that, for a college softball player and lifelong New York Yankees fan, exceeded the others.

“I did get to throw the first pitch out at a Yankees game, which I thought was amazing,” DeVaux said. “To stand on the field and look at the cheap seats [where I sat] when I was a kid. … And I’ve had much better seats in recent times, but to really sit there and have that dichotomy of that was where you started and this is where you are, was really a profound feeling.”

Kentucky Derby winning trainer Cherie DeVaux and jockey Jose Ortiz throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium on May 7.

(Ishika Samant / Getty Images)

Technically she’s back home for the Belmont, which is being run at Saratoga for the third and final year while Belmont Park is rebuilt. But she has few memories of Saratoga as a child; the family moved to Florida when she was 9 and she lived there until she was 19. Much of her family, including her parents and several siblings, live in the area, though, and DeVaux, who spends most of the year in Kentucky, said she’s been able to enjoy some time with them this week.

The big question is whether her large cheering section will be able to celebrate another victory. Handicappers are more than a bit pessimistic. Saturday’s Daily Racing Form has 1-2-3-4 selections by 19 experts, and not one selected Golden Tempo. Just two picked him second and five had him third. The consensus was he would not finish in the top four.

His chances in Kentucky were aided by a fast pace that tired out the front-runners, and on paper the Belmont figures to be run at a more moderate pace, which doesn’t always help a late-running horse. But he is a colt who relishes the distance and he has improved his Beyer Speed Figure with every start.

DeVaux is excited for the race, obviously, but she’s also eager for this “season” to end. She knows life will never be the same as it was before May 2, but she’d like to slow down a bit, in part, so she can enjoy the feeling of winning the Derby.

“I couldn’t prepare myself,” said DeVaux, who had never had a Derby starter. “I didn’t really think about winning the race. I thought Golden Tempo was going to run really well. I thought he would hit the board, … but I never allowed myself to think that he would win and what that would look like.

“And I’m one of those people I want to think about, you know, we win the race, what does that look like? But I was just so excited to be at the Derby and I wanted to just really be present, that it really didn’t cross my mind what would happen if we won the race.”

Golden Tempo’s trainer Cherie DeVaux holds her nephew while speaking to reporters after winning the Kentucky Derby on May 2.

(Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

Others weren’t prepared, either. DeVaux was carrying one of her nephews on her hip immediately after the Derby, and some people watching on TV immediately praised her for being a working mom. One problem: She doesn’t have children of her own (her husband has full custody of a teenage girl).

“Can I just not be a really good horse trainer that did something really profound and amazing in a short amount of time after I had to work my rear end off for it?” DeVaux said. “Like, why can’t that just be the story?”

Etc.

The Belmont is the 13th race on a 14-race card that begins at 8 a.m. PDT. The first seven races will be on FS2 before coverage shifts to Fox at noon (the Belmont show starts at 1). A separate handicapping-oriented show will air from 1-4:30 p.m. on FS1.

There are five Grade 1 races scheduled, including Bob Baffert’s Nysos against Michael McCarthy’s Journalism in the Met Mile (2:32 p.m.) and Baffert’s Crude Velocity against DeVaux’s Englishman in the Woody Stephens (1:52 p.m.). The Belmont is slated to start at about 4:10 p.m.