The final horse race in the U.S. Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes, is known as “The Test of Champions,” and rightly so. It is the longest, most challenging and most unpredictable of the three races (including the Preakness Stakes and the Kentucky Derby) — and the oldest.
The Belmont was named after financier and sportsman August Belmont, who helped fund the first race on June 19, 1867, at Jerome Park in New York. At that time, the track was only 1.625 miles, which accounts for the faster race times when looking at the scores of past champions. The 1.5-mile race was not established until 1926, but in 1921, it was the first to be run in the counter-clockwise direction. Interestingly, only three fillies have won the Belmont Stakes, the first of which was Ruthless in 1867, followed by Tanya (1905) and Rags to Riches (2007).
The year 2020 was the first time since 1925 that the Belmont was temporarily shortened to 1.125 miles. The change was due to COVID restrictions when many racetracks were closed, and training schedules for the horses were interrupted. Tiz the Law won that year with a recorded time of 1.46.5. In 2021, the length returned to 1.5 miles, the equivalent of one lap around the track’s wide oval, and the winner of the Belmont was Essential Quality.
It takes great strength, speed and stamina for a horse to win the Belmont Stakes as well as good jocky. These fastest winners of past Belmont Stakes are only for the horses who ran the entire 1.5-mile race after 1925 and are listed in descending order (although many have tied scores and are equally ranked). Six of these horses won the Triple Crown (only 13 have ever won in history) and are marked with an asterisk.
