With the spring meeting around the corner, now is a good time to address the best way to handicap Belmont Park. The meet starts on Friday April 28 and the 54-day stand will offer fans a variety of handicapping challenges.
Nearly $10 million will be on the agenda in the 18 Graded stakes carded highlighted by the 49th running of the $1.5 million Belmont Stakes on June 10. Also carded that day will be eight additional graded stakes, including five Grade 1 events: the $1.2 million Metropolitan Handicap at a mile, the $1 million Woodford Reserve Manhattan at 1 1/4 miles on the turf, the $750,000 Ogden Phipps for fillies and mares going 1 1/16 miles, the $700,000 Longines Just A Game for turf fillies and mares, and the $700,000 Acorn for 3-year-old fillies at a mile.
One key angle to keep in mind when playing Belmont Park is give a huge edge to the runners that ship up from Gulfstream Park. Those horses have a condition edge and have been racing against the best runners in the East.
The best way to handicap Belmont Park and probably the best way to handicap any track is to first concentrate on speed. Tracks like the Aqueduct inner strip, Monmouth Park and the Western venues have a reputation for being kind toward speed but the Belmont Park dirt track can play the same way.
Because of the configuration of Belmont Park, closers will also have their chance. The main track is a mile and a half and there are two turf courses. The Widener course is a little over one and five-sixteenths miles and the Inner Turf course is a bit over a one and three-sixteenths miles. Horses that even have speed, must conserve energy for the long Belmont Park stretch. The distance from the last turn to the finish line on the dirt is 1,097 feet.
On a general basis, speed holds up better on the inner turf course than on the Widener.
Under dry conditions, speed plays a lot better. Under wet conditions closers tend to perform better on the grass, and outside off-the-pace trips are preferred over inside trips. When handicapping turf sprints, most astute players tend to follow runners from the outside posts. Those runners may not always win races but they should offer value in the gimmicks on almost a daily basis.
As far as the horses are concerned, there are a few runners that just have an affinity for Belmont Park. Lady Eli is one of those runners. The 5-year-old mare is trained by Chad Brown and she loves the Belmont Park inner turf course. She is as classy as they come. She has won seven of her ten races and was second three times. She won the Ms. Grillo at Belmont back in the day, took the $200,000 Wonder Again at the track in 2015 and last year won the Grade 1 Flower Bowl on the inner turf course before losing the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf by a scant nose. The daughter of Divine Park will be a handful this upcoming meeting. She made her 2017 debut April 15 at Keeneland and was a troubled second beaten by a head.
Another horse for the Belmont Park course is Speightster. This runner won at first asking at Keeneland, beat allowance rivals in his next race and then took the Grade 3 Dwyer last year at Belmont with a 104 Beyer Speed Figure. He was not comfortable in his 2017 debut at Churchill but figures to rebound from that effort in a big way during this upcoming meet.
Economic Model is another Brown runner that is talented and is sitting on a huge spring. He has won three of his ten races and has only been out of the money twice. Two of his three wins have come at Belmont Park. He proved he could handle the off going when he won in the slop last May at Belmont. The over $450,000 earner took the $144,000 Easy Goer Stakes last June with a 101 Beyer.
The human factor also has to be addressed when handicapping Belmont Park. The usual jockey suspects will again get the best mounts. The Ortiz boys, Jose and Irad, will competed to win the title as will Javier Castellano and John Velazquez. There are also some riders that just win at a high percentage. Players have to pay attention to guys like Emmanuel Esquivel, Florent Geroux and Joel Rosario.
The guys that pull the strings behind the scenes are the trainers are there are a number of non-household names that will offer value. Phil D’Amato is based in California but if he ships to Belmont Park, pay attention. He won with two of his three starters at the meet last year. Mike Miceli is a former jockey that is now a trainer and he was loaded for bear last season. He saddled eleven horses during the Belmont Park stand and watched six of them win.
Jason Servis trains winners wherever he shows up and he showed up big time at Belmont Park last spring. He sent out 34 horses and eleven won for a cool 32%. Carl Domino and Ralph Nicks don’t send out a lot of horses but they win at over 25% usually.
When the end of the Triple Crown season is upon us, fans will be trying to unravel the Belmont Stakes.
It is difficult race to use traditional handicapping ideas because it is such a unique distance. In Europe, horses consistently travel a mile and a half and longer but not in this country.
Besides the Brooklyn Handicap, and maybe one or two other mile and a half dirt races, you have almost nothing else at Belmont to compare to the Belmont Stakes. It is just a hard race to win as twelve horses attempted to win the Triple Crown and failed since 1978. Superstars like Spectacular Bid, Smarty Jones, Big Brown and California Chrome all botched it up before American Pharoah pulled up the feat in 2015.
Even though the Belmont Stakes is a long race, bettors cannot discount the post-position factor. The Belmont Stakes features the shortest run into the first turn of any of the three Triple Crown races. That can mean that the horses breaking from inside posts run much more of a risk of getting squeezed back early than do the outside horses. Big Brown fell into this very trap. The star had tons of trouble on the first turn of the Belmont Stakes and was eventually pulled up.
