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Test of the Champion

By Bill Heller
First Published: 08 April 2009 - Issue Number: 12

When Big Brown was eased in last year’s Belmont Stakes, he became the seventh three-year-old in the past 12 years to win the first two legs of the Triple Crown without finishing the job and earning Thoroughbred immortality.
Clearly, it’s the mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes, the so-aptly named Test of the Champion, which derails all but the greatest three-year-olds hoping to sweep the Triple Crown. None have been able to do so since Affirmed became the 11th Triple Crown Champion in 1978.
The Belmont Stakes presents a unique challenge to trainers. Their still-maturing three-year-olds have never raced as far as 12 furlongs, and frequently aren’t even trained for it unless they win the first two legs of the Triple Crown, or, occasionally, if they perform well in the mile-and-a-quarter Kentucky Derby and skip the mile-and-three-sixteenths Preakness.
That’s the path that Gato del Sol’s connections chose after he won the 1982 Kentucky Derby with a powerful late run. Gato del Sol was ruled out of the
Preakness Stakes to focus on the Belmont Stakes, but finished an extremely distant second to Conquistador Cielo. More recently, Jazil, trained by Kiaran McLaughlin, dead-heated for fourth in the 2006 Kentucky Derby, skipped the Preakness Stakes and won the Belmont Stakes.
So how do trainers prepare their three-year-olds to race in the mile-and-a-half final leg of the Triple Crown?
Two late Hall of Fame trainers set the bar extremely high. Nobody could have envisioned Conquistador Cielo being the first of trainer Woody Stephens’ incomprehensible five consecutive Belmont Stakes triumphs.
For training a pair of Belmont Stakes winners, how do you top Laz Barrera, who somehow stretched out his Puerto Rican speedster Bold Forbes to not only win the Kentucky Derby, but the Belmont Stakes as well? His Hall of Fame jockey, Angel Cordero, Jr., seemed to carry his horse in the final yards of the Belmont to hold off fast-finishing McKenzie Bridge by a neck in 1976.
The win photo of the 1978 Belmont Stakes is forever imprinted in racing history, when Barrera’s Affirmed, who appeared to be headed by his nemesis Alydar in mid-stretch, came again on the inside to win by a head. Affirmed’s Triple Crown was the third in six years, but history is still waiting, more than three decades later, for another.
The close brushes of the past 12 years only make the Belmont Stakes more compelling.
Only 11 trainers have ever won the Belmont Stakes more than twice.
Most any trainer is thrilled to just win one.
Laz Barrera would win two. “He was very, very sharp,” Cordero said in mid-February. “When he got good horses, he knew what to do. He never over-trained horses. He kept something in the tank. He did a great job with Bold Forbes. He knew not to put much pressure on him.”
Cordero thought he had a great shot in the 1976 Kentucky Derby, and Bold Forbes backed him up, going wire-to-wire to win by a length as the 3-1 second choice over 2-5 favored Honest Pleasure, another speedball ridden by another Hall of F...

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