The field is set for Saturday’s Belmont Stakes and We The People will start from the No. 1 spot, while Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike will start the final leg of the Triple Crown in the No. 4 position.
The Peter Pan Stakes-winning We The People is the morning line favorite win on Saturday on Long Island at 2-1, while the longshot that won the Kentucky Derby, Rich Strike, has 7-2 odds to be crowned the Belmont Stakes winner.
“I don’t look at the odds, but it makes sense,” We The People’s Trainer Rodolphe Brisset said.
Mo Donegal, starting from the sixth post position, has a 5-2 chance to win. Skippylongstocking and Golden Glider are both this year’s longshots at 20-1.
All eyes will be on Rich Strike after the horse took the Ketucky Derby as an 80-1 longshot and owner Rick Dawson was feeling pretty good after Tuesday’s post drawing at Belmont Park.
“I’m good with it. I don’t want to jinx him or anything like that, but four is kind of a lucky number for me so I like our post,” Dawson said. “Just always been a number I seem to win with. I don’t know why. Not only in horse racing, but just various things. If I could have picked a number on the board to start it would have been four. I’ll just put it that way.”
We The People will have plenty of pressure as well, having been near perfect in the races he has run. The only loss he has suffered was in Arkansas Derby back in April.
Brisset was happy that they got the loss out of the way before Belmont or the stakes could have felt even higher for the colt.
“It makes maybe my life a little eassier because he got beat once,” Brisset said. “It’s easier having a horse that got beat once than if you come up to a big race and he’s never got beat. You have even more attention. … We regrouped (from the loss) and he came back very strong (next race).”
Saturday’s race will be the 154th iteration of the famed Belmont Stakes held just over county line in Nassau County. It will be the first time that capacity for the stakes will resemble pre-pandemic levels, but will remain still somewhat restricted.
Ongoing construction because of UBS Arena, the New York Islanders new home that opened next door in November, will limit the capacity to 50,000 spectators. It is still a massive increase from the just over 11,000 fans who were in attendance in 2021, which was the first since the pandemic started that had spectators.
Past editions of the Belmont Stakes have had crowds exceeding 90,000.
