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Belmont Stakes 2026: Renegade, And How To Bet The Saratoga Gate

Before we dive into the field for the 152nd running of the $2-million Belmont Stakes at Saratoga on Saturday evening, it’s helpful to take a close look at advantages and disadvantages that Saratoga’s oval brings to its athletes competing at a mile-and-a-quarter for the third year running.

Yes, the race will still be a fabulous bookend to the Triple Crown series, but the fact of it not being staged on “The Big Sandy,” the monstrous mile-and-a-half oval currently under renovation in Elmont, NY, makes you want to ink an asterisk into the history books on the thus-far three “Belmonts” that will on Saturday have been run at the Spa. Because: The difference between the Belmont-run Belmonts and the Saratoga Belmont is far greater than the shorter distance run.

The math of Saratoga’s curious old oval tells that tale, but it will bring us a more intimate picture of Saturday’s contest to dig deeper into the track’s many tactical demands after a brief refresher on the post positions and the morning line of the nine athletes who will be contending on it.

For the record, then, post time is (approximately) at 7:06 p.m. EDT, and the race will be broadcast on Fox, FS1, FS2, and livestreamed on fubo.

Here, the who’s who of the Saratoga gate:

(Post Position, Trainer, Jockey, Morning Line)

1. Vitruvian Man, Doug O’Neill, Antonio Fresu, 30-1

2. Powershift, Todd Pletcher, Luis Saez, 12-1

3. Chief Wallabee, Bill Mott, Junior Alvarado, 3-1

4. Renegade, Todd Pletcher, Irad Ortiz Jr., 2-1

5. Ottinho, Chad Brown, Dylan Davis, 20-1

6. Growth Equity, Chad Brown, Manny Franco, 12-1

7. Commandment, Brad Cox, John Velazquez, 6-1

8. Emerging Market, Chad Brown, Flavien Prat, 6-1

9. Golden Tempo, Cherie DeVaux, Jose Ortiz, 9-2

(Source: NYRA Date: 6/6/2026)

To the Saratoga math, then: For a nine-furlong (one-and-an-eighth mile) race, the starting gate is placed on the finish line before the stands, and that point lies some 184 feet, or sixty-one yards and change, from the first (clubhouse) turn. That is the crunchiest start possible for an equine athlete, gunning out of the gate and something like eight strides later, facing a turn. There remain exactly zero seconds, and zero inches to find, in which anybody could “settle.” The gate slams open, and from that second on the runners are in a tornado.

For the Belmont, at a short ten furlongs (one-and-a-quarter miles), the Saratoga gate is backed further up the home stretch by a furlong, or 220 yards. This makes the run from the gate to the first turn is some 281 yards and change, or nigh on three football fields in length.

That may sound like plenty of room to jockey for position coming into the first turn, and it is a darn sight more generous than the start at nine furlongs, but it’s still short. The average stride length of a Triple Crown-class Thoroughbred is between 24 and 25 feet, or about eight yards. At full speed, a “fast” Thoroughbred can cover a quarter-mile in 21 seconds. They can do 220 yards, an eighth of a mile, in ten to twelve seconds. We could reasonably argue that every run to every first turn in every flat race in America is by definition a tactical sprint, but this is what makes the 281 yards from Saratoga’s gate to the first turn such a hotly contested one.

Historically, mile-and-a-quarter races at Saratoga have favored, first, in style, front-runners and stalkers rather than deep closers such as Golden Tempo — bringing a late run at Saratoga just leaves too much to do in the thunderous chase to the wire. The second track peculiarity is that Saratoga’s “Belmont” gate setup favors inside post positions most heavily — of the last 39 mile-and-a-quarter contests run there, 20 of them, or just over half, have been won by horses breaking from the three stalls closest to the rail. Stalls four through six have delivered thirteen winners in those races, and the outside three stalls have delivered a meager six wins.

For instance, of Todd Pletcher’s two contenders this evening, this statistic favors Powershift over top morning-line favorite Renegade, which argues (to certain exotics players) that Powershift could well be pushed forward by that factor to be there at the end of the race, and help bring a price.

Renegade is a closer, and Pletcher has been open about how much grit his horse showed in the Derby, righting himself to run a game second after suffering a few bumps in the early traffic. But breaking four from the rail at Saratoga, right in the teeth of the thundering peloton furiously en route into the first turn does not on the surface of it do this particular race-favorite much good. As well, his character — aka, his running style — isn’t especially well suited for the track. He’s not a “stalker,” which the track favors more than a closer. There remains the contradiction of his favorite status in the morning line: Clearly, the NYRA oddsmakers think he’s strong enough to overcome those disadvantages.

This week Golden Tempo’s charming glass-ceiling-breaker and trainer, Cherie DeVaux, admitted that her colt’s ultra-deep, thrilling Derby close was in fact a Saratoga liability, telling no less an outlet and no less a racing writer than the Daily Racing Form’s David Grening that Golden Tempo’s “...running style does leave him vulnerable. He’ll come with a run, but there’s a lot that has to go right for him.”

The implication was that DeVaux was not expecting everything that went right for her charge at Churchill would go right in the Adirondacks this evening. Historically speaking, his extreme outside post position is unfortunately not a great winning point from which to break — Saratoga’s outside post positions having delivered so few winners in the last quarter-century.

William Mott’s Chief Wallabee, by contrast, can be helped by his Belmont post position, and the trainer has added blinkers this evening to help his concentration when the going gets tough. Jockey Junior Alvarado has admitted noticing Chief Wallabee’s eyes darting hither and yon at the competition in the heat of action before, and the jockey and trainer are hoping that this tweak will mean that Chief Wallabee can drill down and focus on his work when he should.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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