Atlanta horse Dornoch beats 17 to 1 in winning Belmont Stakes

The horse, also co-owned by World Series champion Jayson Werth, won the Belmont five weeks after a difficult journey that led to a 10th-place finish in the Kentucky Derby. This time, Dornoch pulled away from leader Seize the Gray, passed the Preakness winner down the stretch and held on.

“I would put it on the same level as winning on the biggest stage. Horse racing is the most underrated sport in the world, bar none,” said Werth, who won the World Series with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008. “It’s the greatest game: You have the Derby , the Preakness, the Belmont. We just won the Belmont. That’s the best thing about horse racing. This is as good as it gets in sports.

It’s the first Triple Crown victory for Gargan and the second at the Belmont for Saez, who said he never lost confidence in Dornoch.

“He’s one of the best 3-year-olds in the country and we’ve always thought so,” Gargan said. “We let him run his race and he won. If he can run, he will always be hard to beat.

This is the sixth consecutive year that a different horse has won each of the three Triple Crown races. Sierra Leone, Derby runner-up and favorite, finished third and Honor Marie fourth.

“No one believed in this horse,” Gargan said. “It’s speechless. He is such a talented horse.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Although there is no Triple Crown on the line, this is a historic Belmont as the race was held at Saratoga for the first time in the venue’s 161-year history. He returns next year as Belmont Park undergoes a massive $455 million rebuild with plans to return the Triple Crown to the New York track in 2026.

Having it at Saratoga necessitated shortening the race to 1 1/4 miles from the usual 1 1/2-mile “test of the champion” that has been a feature of the Belmont for nearly a century. The temporary change helped bring more quality horses to the field that previously ran in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness or both.