NEW YORK -- Someone had to win the 149th running of the Belmont Stakes, and as the field of 11 mostly maligned horses edged into the starting gate, the odds board was a patchwork of indecision with no clear favorites and few bettors backing up their convictions with cold hard cash.
The "Test of a Champion," as the Belmont is known, was anything but this time.
The Kentucky Derby winner, Always Dreaming, was in no shape to race after finishing a disappointing eighth in the Preakness Stakes.
The colt that had banished him, Cloud Computing, was rested by his owners and pointed toward rich races at the end of the summer like the Haskell Invitational and the Travers Stakes.
So this grand Long Island racetrack, the site of Triple Crown coronations for immortal horses like Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Affirmed and, most recently, American Pharoah, was more or less an audition stage for a bunch of unproven 3-year-olds, any one of whom might evolve into a future powerhouse.
Let's not keep anyone in suspense -- a colt named Tapwrit passed the favorite, Irish War Cry, down the stretch and legged out a 2-length victory in the 1½-mile marathon in a final time of 2:30.02.
He paid $12.60 for a $2 bet, and rewarded his owners, a partnership of Bridlewood Farm, Eclipse Thoroughbred and Robert LaPenta, a first-place check worth $800,000. Not a bad payday at all, but a little short of the $1.2 million that Tapwrit, the son of Tapit, had fetched at auction as a yearling.
There was no Triple Crown on the line to add to the day's allure, but a crowd of 57,729 horse-playing, horse-loving connoisseurs came out nonetheless, and offered their full-throated support for some of the sport's more unsung stars.
The 4-year-old filly Songbird ran her record to 12 victories in 13 starts and was pushed to the limit in the Grade I, $750,000 Ogden Phipps.
She was ridden by Mike Smith, who won five races here Saturday and more than lived up to his nickname of Big Money Mike.
But the Belmont Stakes was still the main attraction, and its anthem -- "New York, New York" -- was appropriate. The winning jockey, Jose Ortiz, is perennially at the top of the New York Racing Association's rider standings. The winning trainer, Todd Pletcher, is the undisputed king of racing in New York -- and beyond, at the moment -- and Tapwrit became his third Belmont Stakes winner, joining Rags to Riches and Palace Malice.
Tapwrit's victory also meant Pletcher, who also trained the Derby champ Always Dreaming, could boast that he swept two-thirds of the Triple Crown. He made sure to savor it.
"This is our home," he said. "This is where I make my living. It's where my kids go to home school. It means a lot."
It was the first victory in a Triple Crown race for jockey Jose Ortiz and it came a year after his brother, Irad, won it aboard Creator.
Ortiz always had been bullish on Tapwrit; He won the Tampa Bay Derby aboard him in March, got smoked atop him in April in the Blue Grass Stakes and then survived a rough ride on the first Saturday in May but still managed to finish sixth in the Derby.
"I always had a lot of faith in him," Ortiz said.
Pletcher's belief in Tapwrit took hold in the past month. He thought Tapwrit's run in the Derby was "sneaky good." The colt was wiped out at the start, but managed to bull his way through an unruly field, getting bumped and pin-balled the whole way.
Still, Pletcher said he thought that Always Dreaming was the best 3-year-old in his barn and had a real chance to sweep the Triple Crown. But Tapwrit seemed to come out of the Derby in good shape and Pletcher started to have the kind of worries horse trainers dream about.
"Winning the Triple Crown is my ultimate dream, but he was training so well I got worried about what we were going to do with Tapwrit," he said.
The loss of Always Dreaming gave Pletcher a clear conscience to not only run Tapwrit but get behind him with both hands.
"We were hoping he had enough when it came to crunchtime," Pletcher said.
Sports on 06/11/2017