How to watch the 157th Belmont Stakes: Schedule, odds, horses and weather

New York Times

13 hours ago

The third and final leg of horse racing's Triple Crown happens Saturday evening, and this year's 'Run for the Carnations' has a $2 million purse. Saratoga Race Course hosts the 157th Belmont Stakes while its usual home, Belmont Park, undergoes a massive renovation. There is a rejuvenated energy at this new venue, with last year's attendance capped at 50,000. Sovereignty, the Kentucky Derby winner, skipped the Preakness but is back for the Belmont Stakes with 2-1 odds. Journalism, the recent Preakness champ, is the clubhouse favorite at 8-5.
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Here is the field, sorted by post position, with jockeys and morning line odds:
Post time is set for 7:04 p.m. ET. But FS1's pre-race coverage begins at 10:30 a.m. ET, with several hours of programming on both FS1 and Fox (starting at 2:30 p.m. on Fox) before the main event on FOX at 6:30. The ever-present Curt Menefee anchors the pre-race studio stuff. He's flanked by two fixtures of the sport in trainer Tom Amoss and jockey Richard Migliore. Tom Rinaldi offers his trademark narrative excellence from the racetrack. Maggie Wolfendale is a top-tier analyst from the paddock. Frank Mirahmadi will call the Belmont Stakes and all supporting races on Fox. And apparently, Terry Bradshaw is going to pop in and out of frame.
This year, thanks to the changed venue, the race is shorter than its usual 1 1/2 miles (12 furlongs) at 1 1/4 miles long, or 10 furlongs. Saratoga Race Course also hosted the Belmont Stakes in 2024.
The legendary Secretariat set the race records at Belmont Park (the longer distance) for speed and margin of victory back in 1973. That feat sealed his '73 Triple Crown, too. Secretariat really was the greatest of all time … the GOAT-horse, if your imagination will allow for such a majestic creature.
The Belmont Stakes' winningest jockeys are Jim McLaughlin (1882-86) and Eddie Arcaro (1941-55). Each finished in first six times. The winningest trainer here is James G. Rowe Sr., with eight triumphs between 1883 and 1913. Wilder still, he also won the race as a jockey … twice, with two different horses, in 1872 and '73.
Dornoch took last year's title, a bay colt co-owned by former MLB All-Star Jayson Werth. The horse clocked in at 2:01.64. Dornoch retired after last year's strong finish, and his jockey, Luis Saez, is racing with Uncaged on Saturday.
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According to The Weather Channel, Saratoga Springs should expect rainfall throughout Friday and into Saturday morning. The forecast calls for some sunshine afterward, and conditions should be clear by post time, with 84-85 percent humidity and 6-7 mph winds from the northwest.
The winning owner gets a Tiffany & Co. silver trophy. The winning horse gets a blanket of white carnations. It doesn't seem like proportional compensation, but so it goes. A bunch of New York-centric songs have been used for the winner's trot, from Charles B. Lawlor's 'The Sidewalks of New York' to Jay Z and Alicia Keys' 'Empire State of Mind,' but the enduring anthem is 'New York, New York' by Frank Sinatra.
The official cocktail was the questionable Belmont Breeze — whiskey, sherry, juices, sodas and a splash of cream. Now it is the Belmont Jewel, a simpler mix of bourbon, lemonade and pomegranate juice over ice.
Morning line refers to the first slate of odds, based on the initial poll position. Horse racing has parimutuel betting, meaning that any odds fluctuation applies to all bettors until the final odds are settled. For most sports, a 10-1 ticket will pay out at 10-1, even if the pregame odds shift down to 2-1. But for horse racing, that 10-1 ticket will pay out at 2-1. There's no extra credit for getting the pick before it was popular.
Bettors can try to predict the race's winner outright, but there are a variety of other ways to get action on a racer:
What would a 2025 Belmont Stakes win mean for Journalism's legacy?
2025 Belmont Stakes power rankings: How Journalism, Sovereignty and the field stack up
Steve Cady on June 10, 1973:
''Three…two…one—ignition!'
'It was racing's version of a moon shot, and the crowd of nearly 70,000 at Belmont Park never stopped yelling yesterday as Secretariat roared off the launching pad and streaked to the first Triple Crown in 25 years. Any other horse who set the kind of pace he set in the 1½‐mile Belmont Stakes would have come home in a horse ambulance. Secretariat came to the wire in glory, a 31‐length winner of the fastest dirt‐course mile and a half ever run in America.
''I just let him run his own way,' said an obviously relieved Ron Turcotte after riding the Meadow Stable colt down geranium‐lined Victory Lane to collect the blanket of white carnations. 'All of us had a lot of pressure, but I guess I carried the last couple of minutes of it.''
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(Photo of Sovereignty, ridden by Junior Alvarado, winning the Kentucky Derby in May: Grace Bradley / Getty Images)