NEW YORK – Triple Crown veteran Todd Pletcher gave simple advice on Saturday to jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. before the Belmont Stakes.
“Be patient,” Pletcher said. “I think you have the best last quarter of every horse in the race.”
Sometimes Mo is less.
Mo Donegal withdrew from the home section and held the mare Nest to win the Belmont Stakes, giving Pletcher 1-2 and his sixth victory with Triple Crown, including four on this track on the outskirts of New York.
“To be honest with you, we were a little confident to take part in the race today,” said Donegal Racing CEO and co-owner Jerry Crawford. “When I turned home, I said to myself, forget about it. I know Todd thought he could make a strong last quarter mile, and he certainly did.
Rich Strike, a stunning winner of the Kentucky Derby at odds of 80 to 1, was sixth.
Mo Donegal covered the distance of 1½ mile in 2 minutes, 28.28 seconds, three lengths ahead of Nest – ridden by Ortiz’s brother, Jose. Pletcher, who lives on Long Island, added another title to Belmont after victories with Rags to Riches in 2007, Palace Malice in 2013 and Tapwrit in 2017.
Mo Donegal defeated a field with eight horses without a clear favorite. We, the people, an exceptional runner in the mud, found at 2: 1 against the background of a rain forecast, but we reached 7: 2 by the time of the race, as the rains stopped.
Mo Donegal entered the goal as a betting favorite at 5: 2. We humans led for most of the race, but Mo Donegal and Ortiz took control, coming out of the last turn.
The 3-year-old stallion paid $ 7.20, $ 3.80 and $ 3. Nest – who almost became Pletcher’s second mare to win Belmont after Rags to Riches – paid $ 5.30 and $ 4.10. Skippylongstocking was third and returned $ 5.60 to participate. We humans finished fourth.
Rich Striker owner Rick Dawson and coach Eric Reed pulled the Kentucky Derby winner out of Preakness with a look at Belmont, the first healthy horse to miss Pimlico after winning the first 1985 Triple Crown race.
Reed said the team encouraged jockey Sonny Leon to try to push Rich Strike out, but the horse kept trying to get back inside – where he made a late hit over 19 horses to win the Churchill Downs. Rich Strike spent much of Saturday’s race in last place and could not recover.
“I think we just made a tactical mistake,” Reed said.
Just like Rich Strike, Mo Donegal was at the bottom of the Derby group, but the stallion didn’t have enough of a hit in the Church Downs. He found it on Saturday, winning the 154th race in the $ 1.5 million race.
Mo Donegal made the winner from co-owner Mike Repole, a local entrepreneur known around the track as “Mike of Queens”. Repole is also a co-owner of Nest.
“This is the biggest race in New York and to win it here, with my family and friends and 70 people here, it will be the big winner’s circle,” he said.
This is the fourth consecutive year the Triple Crown competitions have been won by three different horses, for the first time for this sport from 1926 to 1929.
The race marked a return to form for Belmont itself, after the 2020 bet was closed to the public due to the pandemic and the event in 2021 was limited to 11,238 spectators due to viral restrictions.
Capacity was again limited, this time to 50,000, due to fears of congestion stemming from the newly built arena next to the New York Islanders of the NHL. However, fans crowded the cars on the Long Island Railroad and breathed life into the 117-year-old track with flower hats, pastel costumes and the unmistakable musk of alcohol and cigars.
The reported attendance of 46,103 is well below the field record of 120,139 set in 2004. It is not a big surprise, given the unstable weather forecast and the lack of a contender for the Triple Crown.
The field was also sparse. No horse has run through all three legs of the Triple Crown this year, raising fears that three races in five weeks may be too tight a schedule to keep horses healthy.
The winner of Preakness Early Voting has been eliminated, likely to prepare for the $ 1.25 million Travers Stakes at the Saratoga Racecourse on August 27. Epicenter, second in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, also missed out.
In the $ 500,000 Acorn for 3-year-old rockers, Matarea stepped up to a 6-length victory. Beloved Echo Zulu scratched the post on the advice of a veterinarian on the track.
Trained by Brad Cox and ridden by Flavien Pratt, Matarea ($ 2.60) ran the mile in 1: 35.77, winning for the fifth time in eight career starts.
The highly-favored Flightline took a step back slowly, overcame a traffic problem and reached a 6-minute victory in the $ 1 million Hill ‘N’ Dale Metropolitan Mile.
The victory kept the 4-year-old stallion Tapit undefeated in four career starts. He was the first not to win with double-digit lengths. Flightline ($ 2.90) was also driven by Pratt and trained by John Sadler.
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