Golden Tempo Adds Belmont Stakes Crown To Kentucky Derby Breakthrough

NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Golden Tempo, already this year’s Kentucky Derby champion, added the 158th Belmont Stakes to his résumé on Saturday at Saratoga Race Course, extending a landmark season for trainer Cherie DeVaux.

The colt, who had already put DeVaux in the record books as the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner, came back from bypassing the Preakness and again produced a powerful rally from the rear under Jose Ortiz. The win gave DeVaux another Triple Crown success in Saratoga Springs, New York, the town where she is from.

“Golden Tempo is amazing. Jose is amazing,” DeVaux said, visibly overwhelmed, as she described the Saratoga victory as “so meaningful”. She added: “The town gets to have this and celebrate it along with all of us.”

Saratoga staged the US$2-million Belmont for the third consecutive year while work continued at Belmont Park. Because the race was again away from its usual home, the event known as the “Test of the Champion” was run over 1 1/4 miles instead of the standard 1 1/2 miles used on Belmont Park’s larger circuit.

Before Golden Tempo had reached the winner’s enclosure, DeVaux was asked whether the result would stir debate about what might have happened had he contested all three Triple Crown races and chased a 14th sweep of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont.

“It’s not something I want to think about,” said DeVaux, who, together with the owners, chose to skip the Preakness two weeks after the May 2 Derby so the horse could recover from what she called his “tremendous effort” at Churchill Downs.

“We made our decision and he won today, and we’re going to be happy about that,” she said. “I think he needed to do this to kind of show that he was meant to win the Derby and that he is a horse that belongs in that conversation of being one of the top three-year-olds.”

Ortiz, smiling and splashed with mud, said: “It’s all about him. We just want him to get better and keep winning these kind of races.”

Officials moved the post time up by several minutes as a storm approached, and rain started falling while the nine runners were heading into the starting gate.

Ortiz, as he had done in the Kentucky Derby, kept Golden Tempo behind the early leaders. Powershift, trained by Todd Pletcher, set the pace, though it was far slower than the fierce fractions seen in the Derby.

“He wasn’t going to get that set-up as he did in the Derby,” Ortiz said. “We all knew that, and I was a little worried about it. He needs some kind of set-up, but today there wasn’t one and he showed up.”

Coming toward the stretch, Ortiz angled Golden Tempo to the outside and asked him to run. The colt steadily closed on Brad Cox-trained Commandment and edged clear late as they charged for the finish.

Commandment, with John Velazquez aboard, took second, 1 1/4 lengths behind the winner. Renegade, the 8-5 favourite ridden by Ortiz’s brother Irad, finished third after having been beaten by a neck when second in the Kentucky Derby.

DeVaux became the second woman to send out a Belmont Stakes winner, following Jena Antonucci’s 2023 success with Archangelo. She is also now the first female trainer with two Triple Crown race victories.