Belmont Stakes Opens: America's Oldest Triple Crown Race Begins

The first Belmont Stakes was run at Jerome Park Racetrack in the Bronx, New York, on June 19, 1867, three years before the Kentucky Derby and six years before the Preakness Stakes, making it the oldest of the three American Triple Crown races. A filly named Ruthless won the inaugural running, covering the one-and-five-eighths-mile course in three minutes and five seconds. The race carried a purse of $1,500 with an entry fee of $200 per horse, a half-forfeit arrangement typical of nineteenth-century American racing. The race was named for August Belmont Sr., the German-born financier and sportsman who helped establish American thoroughbred racing as a legitimate institution during the Civil War era. Belmont, who served as the American representative of the Rothschild banking family, used his wealth and social position to build Jerome Park in 1866 with Leonard Jerome (Winston Churchill's grandfather) and William R. Travers. The track was designed as a fashionable sporting venue for New York's elite, modeled on the great racecourses of England. Jerome Park closed in 1894, and the Belmont Stakes moved to Morris Park and then to its permanent home at Belmont Park in Elmont, Long Island, which opened in 1905. The track's main course was deliberately designed with long sweeping turns to accommodate the Belmont Stakes' distance, which was standardized at one and a half miles in 1926, making it the longest of the three Triple Crown races and the greatest test of stamina for three-year-old thoroughbreds. The Belmont has served as the decisive race for every Triple Crown attempt since Sir Barton first swept all three in 1919. Only thirteen horses have completed the Triple Crown, most recently Justify in 2018. The race's nickname, the "Test of the Champion," reflects its role as the final barrier between near-greatness and immortality in American horse racing.