Arcangelo pulls away from the field at the 155th running of the Belmont Stakes (Kevin Kane/KK Images)
Next year’s Belmont Stakes will not be run at Belmont Park on the Queens/Nassau border, Governor Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday.
The third leg of thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown will instead be run upstate at Saratoga Race Course as part of a special spring racing festival while the $450 million reconstruction of Belmont Park continues. Saratoga traditionally hosts racing from mid-July through Labor Day on the New York Racing Association (NYRA) circuit, but the Belmont rebuild — which includes a new, smaller grandstand and renovated racing surfaces — has necessitated major changes to the racing schedule.
Traditionally, the Belmont Stakes brings crowds of between 50,000 and 90,000 to Belmont Park, the number often titling higher whenever a Triple Crown sweep is possible — as it was in 2015 and 2018, when American Pharoah and Justify, respectively, became the 12th and 13th Triple Crown winners. But the ongoing project made it impossible to host racing at Belmont next year.
Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, which was downsized years ago with the development of the Resorts World New York City casino, will host in 2024 other race dates normally run at Belmont, but lacks the seating capacity to accommodate an event such as the Belmont Stakes.
Saratoga, however, has a capacity of about 50,000 patrons; NYRA has spent millions of dollars upgrading the facility in recent years, and the track normally gets close to a million fans during its 40-day summer racing meet.
The four-day Belmont Stakes festival at Saratoga, scheduled for June 6-9, figures to get large crowds for the novelty meet. The Belmont Stakes itself will also be different; the traditional 1 1/2 mile distance will be truncated to 1 1/4 miles because of Saratoga’s smaller 1 1/8 mile main track.
NYRA is also increasing the Belmont Stakes purse next year from $1.5 million to $2 million….
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