Triple Crown History: Why the Belmont Stakes Is the Hardest Race to Win
Twenty horses swept the Kentucky Derby and Preakness — and failed at the final fence. Here’s why the Test of the Champion has broken so many dreams, and why 2026 is a Belmont like no other.
They called Smarty Jones unbeatable. They called Big Brown a “forgone conclusion.” They backed I’ll Have Another at 6-5 and Justify at even money. And one by one, the Belmont Stakes found a way to say no.
Of the 33 horses to arrive at the Belmont Stakes needing only a win to complete the Triple Crown, just 13 have done it. Twenty have not. That’s a failure rate that tells you everything you need to know about why this race — run this Saturday at Saratoga Race Course for the third and final time — carries a nickname that isn’t sentiment. It’s a warning: the Test of the Champion.
The 158th Belmont Stakes takes place on June 6, 2026. It is the last time the race will be held at Saratoga before the new Belmont Park opens its doors in September. That makes it one of the most significant Belmonts in years — and one of the most fascinating betting events of the entire Triple Crown season.
The Distance That Changes Everything
The Kentucky Derby is run at a mile and a quarter. The Preakness is a mile and three-sixteenths. For the 2024 and 2025 editions at Saratoga, the Belmont was trimmed to a mile and a quarter too — Saratoga’s main track, an oval of a mile and an eighth, simply doesn’t allow for the traditional mile-and-a-half distance.
The 2026 Belmont is also run at a mile and a quarter. What remains the same is the cumulative toll: three Grade 1 races in five weeks, the hardest horses in the country, and a field that’s been racing at the very top level since before Churchill Downs opened its gates in early May.
Three-year-olds are still physically maturing when the Triple Crown season arrives. They have never faced a schedule this demanding. The horses who reach the Belmont having run the Derby and the Preakness are not the same animals who broke from the gate at Churchill Downs. They are tired. They are sore. And they are about to face the sharpest, freshest challengers in training.
The 'Freshies' Problem
Every year, trainers who skipped the Derby or the Preakness arrive at the Belmont with horses that have had weeks to rest, sharpen, and prepare for a single target. They have no accumulated fatigue. They have no muscle soreness. They are ready to run the race of their lives.
The Triple Crown contender, meanwhile, is asked to do something no horse is designed to do — run three major races in five weeks and still find something extra at the end of the third.
Funny Cide in 2003. Smarty Jones in 2004. Big Brown in 2008. California Chrome in 2014. All won the Derby and the Preakness. All were beaten by horses that hadn’t run either of them. The freshness factor isn’t a theory. It’s a pattern written across decades of Belmont history.
The 13 Who Survived: A Brief History of Triple Crown Winners
Since Sir Barton became America’s first Triple Crown winner in 1919, only 12 horses followed him across the line with all three legs intact. For 37 years between 1978 and 2015, none managed it at all.
Secretariat in 1973 didn’t just win the Belmont. He won it by 31 lengths — a margin so absurd that people in the stands reportedly couldn’t believe what they were seeing. His time of 2:24 for the mile and a half remains an American record that no horse has approached in over fifty years.
Seattle Slew in 1977 became the only horse to complete the Triple Crown while remaining undefeated. Affirmed in 1978 had to hold off his great rival Alydar — who finished second in all three races — to seal his sweep. Then came 37 years of silence.
American Pharoah ended it in 2015. Victor Espinoza urged him clear in the final furlong and the crowd roared in a way that shook Belmont Park. Three years later, Justify did it again — becoming the first horse since Apollo in 1882 to win the Triple Crown without having raced as a two-year-old.
Thirteen in over a century. That is what the Belmont asks for.
Three Years at the Spa: The Saratoga Belmont Story
Belmont Park has been home to this race since 1905. But since 2024, the old venue has been a construction site. The $455 million redevelopment project, overseen by NYRA, has been rebuilding one of American sport’s most iconic addresses from the ground up.
The decision was made to move the Belmont to Saratoga Race Course for 2024, 2025 and 2026. It’s a track with its own extraordinary history — the oldest sporting venue in continuous operation in the United States, a place where Man o’ War was beaten, where the Travers Stakes has been run since 1864, and where the phrase “the graveyard of champions” was coined because so many favourites have come undone in upstate New York.
The first Belmont at Saratoga in 2024 was won by 18-1 shot Dornoch, trained by Danny Gargan and ridden by Luis Saez. In 2025, Sovereignty under Junior Alvarado for trainer William Mott and owner Godolphin took the prize. Neither was a Triple Crown race — the Derby and Preakness winners both skipped one leg or another — but both gave Saratoga a taste of what the third jewel feels like.
On June 6, 2026, it happens for the last time. The new Belmont Park opens September 18, 2026. The Belmont Stakes returns to Elmont, Long Island in 2027, and in 2027 it will host the Breeders’ Cup for the first time since 2005. The era of the Saratoga Belmont is drawing to a close.
The 2026 Belmont: What Makes This One Different
Napoleon Solo won the 2026 Preakness Stakes at Laurel Park at odds of 8-1. Golden Tempo, the Kentucky Derby winner, skipped the Preakness entirely. That means the 2026 Belmont does not have a Triple Crown in play — but it absolutely has a final chapter at Saratoga, a loaded field, and a race that has never needed a storyline to deliver drama.
What it does have is a field of three-year-olds that has been through the wars, a set of fresh challengers who have been waiting for exactly this moment, and the knowledge that this specific combination — the Belmont Stakes, at Saratoga, in June — will never happen again.
Post time is 7:04 PM ET. The gates close on three years of history. Make it count.
Bet the 2026 Belmont Stakes at MyWinners
MyWinners is open to all customers aged 18 (21 in some states) and over for pari-mutuel horse racing betting. You can bet the 2026 Belmont Stakes — and the full Belmont Stakes Racing Festival card — online, via the app or at a venue.
Bet online at app.mywinners.com, on the MyWinners: Racing & Sports app on iOS or Android, or go here to find your nearest MyWinners or Winners venue in CT.
