Five years after a crowd of 90,000 shook the rafters of Belmont Park’s mammoth grandstand as American Pharoah turned for home on his run to complete the Triple Crown, approximately 150 gathered at the Elmont, N.Y. oval Saturday for a delayed, shortened Belmont Stakes.
The coronavirus did not spare Thoroughbred racing and its signature series, delaying the Belmont by two weeks and placing it in the unfamiliar role of leading off the sequence, with the Kentucky Derby moving from the first Saturday in May to Labor Day Weekend and the Preakness to Oct. 3.
And with fans not allowed at Belmont Park Saturday, attendance was limited to trainers, jockeys, New York Racing Association (NYRA) staff and a select group of media members, including the NBC broadcast team and support staff.
The empty stands played no role in the outcome of the race, as heavy favorite Tiz The Law rolled to a 3¾-length win and solidified his standing as the Kentucky Derby favorite, albeit with the race still almost 11 weeks off.
Having been part of that raucous gathering that watched American Pharoah win the Triple Crown for the first time in 37 years — for the record, my all-time in-person sporting event highlight, and I have been to the World Series, Super Bowl and Stanley Cup finals — it is hard to fathom a virtually empty Belmont Park on Belmont Stakes Day.
We are talking about a facility that hosted three consecutive 100,000-plus crowds from 2002-04 when a Triple Crown was on the line, including a record 120,139 in ’04 when Birdstone rained on the Smarty Jones parade.
In 2014, when California Chrome made his unsuccessful run at immortality, the announced crowd of 102,199 proved to be too much for the NYRA staff and infrastructure to comfortably accommodate, leading to a cap of 90,000 for the American Pharoah coronation the following year.
I was there for both and I can assure you the circumstances of 2014 justified setting a maximum attendance the following year.
That was not the only Triple Crown close call I have witnessed. There was Charismatic in 1999, when he took the lead in the stretch before suffering a serious injury. Jockey Chris Antley — who won the first horse race I ever covered for The Item, the 1985 Suffolk Downs Sprint Handicap — dismounted right after the wire and cradled the horse’s broken leg, almost certainly saving his life.
Big Brown seemed like a lock to wear the Crown in 2008, but he couldn’t take the heat of the 95-degree day. In 2012, I’ll Have Another would have been the favorite had he not come up with an injury the day before the race.
The atmosphere at Belmont Park on Belmont Stakes Day is electric, especially when there is a Triple Crown on the line. When the horses come onto the track to the sounds of Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” the crowd singing back-up to Ol’ Blue Eyes, you are either deeply touched or comatose.
That makes what transpired Saturday hard to fathom, but in this COVID culture that has been thrust upon us, it was a major victory to run the race at all. Horse racing is the only sport that did not outright shut down during the pandemic, as a handful of tracks stayed open with no spectators. The horses were willing to show up for work, unlike the horse’s arses who call themselves Major League Baseball players and their equally tone-deaf bosses.
Some feel the Belmont was somehow cheapened by the fact that it was run at 1 1/8 miles instead of the customary 1½ miles that make it the Test of the Champion. First, running 3-year-olds 12 furlongs without having the benefit of building up to that distance in the Derby and/or Preakness would be irresponsible. Then, consider that, albeit a 1½-mile rice since 1926, it has been run at three other distances 41 times in the previous 151 editions.
In 2020, the Belmont was first and the Preakness will be last, with the Derby in the middle. So what? There is still a chance for a Triple Crown, and for those who say that if a horse wins the three races over 16 weeks instead of five it would be less of an achievement, you could make a cogent argument that keeping a 3-year-old that sharp for that long would perhaps be an even more impressive feat.
That’s a debate that can be held over coffee at the Oklahoma training track on a Saratoga morning, God willing. For now, let’s be thankful that horse racing, the greatest game played outdoors, is alive and well and one of its signature races is in the books, even if we couldn’t be there to see it in person.
Paul Halloran is managing editor at Grant Communications Consulting Group. A longtime member of the New England Turf Writers Association, he has been covering horse racing for 35 years and is a contributing writer at the Saratoga Special and thisishorseracing.com.
