Golden Tempo wins Belmont Stakes, DeVaux makes history again

Golden Tempo gave horse racing a rare national storyline on Saturday, finishing strong in the 158th Belmont Stakes at Saratoga Race Course and adding the final jewel of the spring to the Kentucky Derby he had won five weeks earlier. Under José Ortiz, the colt covered 1 1/4 miles in 2:03.49, held off Commandment, and beat favorite Renegade for a $14.00 payoff after going off at 6-1.

The result mattered beyond the payout and the margin. Golden Tempo’s Derby-Belmont double offered the kind of star power the sport often struggles to sustain, especially in a year when the Triple Crown trail was fractured by a skipped Preakness Stakes run. Golden Tempo bypassed Pimlico, ending his Triple Crown bid before the Belmont and extending the drought of a Triple Crown winner, but the decision did not blunt the significance of the colt’s stretch run in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Cherie DeVaux, who was born in Saratoga Springs, added another landmark to a career already rewritten by Golden Tempo’s Derby victory. She became the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner in May and now is the first woman to win multiple Triple Crown races. Jena Antonucci remains the other woman with a Belmont title, having won in 2023 with Arcangelo. For DeVaux, the Belmont confirmed that her breakthrough was not a one-race anomaly but part of a larger shift at the highest levels of the sport.

Ortiz also deepened his Belmont record. The jockey earned his second victory in the race, nine years after guiding Tapwrit to the winner’s circle in 2017. This time, he had to adapt to a different pace scenario than the one Golden Tempo saw in Louisville, and the colt still found the late acceleration needed to prevail in a nine-horse field.

The race carried added weight because it was the third and final Belmont Stakes held at Saratoga while Belmont Park on Long Island is being rebuilt. New York Racing Association officials have said the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival will return to Belmont Park in 2027, after the new facility in Elmont reopens. Co-owner Vinnie Viola dedicated the victory to Dominic DiPrisco, who died at 70, saying the race was for him. In a sport searching for reliable stars, Golden Tempo briefly made the answer look obvious.