Tapit ties Lexington for Belmont Stakes sire record with four winners

Tapit has reached a rare American racing summit that stretches from Jerome Park in 1868 to Saratoga Race Course in 2026: four Belmont Stakes winners, the same total as Lexington, and no other stallion in the race’s 157-year history has matched it. With Saturday’s Belmont Stakes set for Saratoga as part of a five-day festival running June 3-7, Tapit’s hold on the race is no longer just a pedigree footnote. It is one of the clearest signs of how a modern sire has shaped the sport’s biggest stamina test.

The list tells the story. Tonalist won the Belmont in 2014, Creator in 2016, Tapwrit in 2017 and Essential Quality in 2021, when Tapit’s fourth Belmont winner gave him the tie with Lexington. Essential Quality’s victory came at Belmont Park in front of a COVID-reduced crowd of 11,238, a reminder that the milestone arrived in an unusual setting but still carried the weight of history.

Lexington’s four Belmont winners came in a different age of racing: one in 1868 at Jerome Park, then King Fisher in 1870, Harry Bassett in 1871 and Duke of Magenta in 1878. Tapit’s dominance, by contrast, has come in the contemporary era, across changing broodmare populations, different race-day environments and different versions of the Belmont itself. That matters because it shows the stallion’s influence is not frozen in one breed cycle or one track configuration. It keeps renewing itself.

That renewal is part of why Belmont week remains such an important measuring stick for Tapit. His runners have repeatedly shown they can carry speed around two turns and keep going when the distance gets demanding, not only in the Belmont but in other major route races. Tonalist’s back-to-back wins in the Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes in 2014 and 2015 fit the same pattern: a Tapit colt with the stamina and class to keep showing up in Grade 1 company.

The market has noticed. Gainesway describes Tapit as one of the most influential and breed-shaping stallions of the past half-century, and his record backs that up with 35 Grade 1 winners, 44 yearlings that sold for $1 million or more and more than $224 million in racetrack earnings. Those numbers help explain why Belmont success still carries such weight for his legacy and stud value.

This year adds another layer. NYRA and Gov. Kathy Hochul have said the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival is back at Saratoga for a third and final year while the rebuilt Belmont Park is completed, with the renovated track scheduled to open to the public in September and the race expected to return there in 2027. For Tapit, that means another Belmont-stage test in a different venue, with the same question underneath it all: when American racing asks for stamina, does his line still answer first?