2025 Belmont Stakes Preview: Favorites, Longshots, and Top Storylines

The Belmont Stakes takes place on Saturday from Saratoga Race Course in New York as the final leg of the Triple Crown.

Sovereignty trains at Saratoga Race Course in upstate New York on June 5, 2025, ahead of Saturday's running of the Belmont Stakes. Al Bello/Getty Images

Triple Crown season ends Saturday at Saratoga Race Course in New York with the 2025 Belmont Stakes.

Nicknamed The Run for the Carnations, the race is not taking place at its normal home of Belmont Park due to ongoing renovations, and the venue change has also necessitated a distance change.

The Belmont is usually the longest of the Triple Crown races at 1 1/2 miles, but with the shift in venue, the 2025 Belmont Stakes will take place over 1 1/4 miles. That’s the same distance as the Kentucky Derby, and that race’s winner—Sovereignty—as well as the Preakness Stakes champion, Journalism, are the two clear headliners on Saturday.

With no Triple Crown at stake, there is still a Double on the line for both thoroughbreds. Sovereignty is hoping to complete the Derby-Belmont Double, which hasn’t been accomplished in 30 years among non-Triple Crown winners. Meanwhile, the Preakness-Belmont Double is on the line for Journalism, and that hasn’t been seen in 20 years.

While Journalism is the race’s favorite, thanks to that Preakness win and prevailing in five of his past six races, his one defeat over that time came at the hooves of Sovereignty. The latter has won three of his past four starts, and he also has a rest advantage over his presumed rival because he bypassed the Preakness. Sovereignty will have five weeks of rest when horses go to post, while Journalism will have just three weeks.

Fortunately, the shortened race could negate some of the effects of a quick turnaround for Journalism and provide a duel as exciting as the Derby, when they were separated by just 1  1/2 lengths. Another potential neutralizer is that the weather forecasts for upstate New York call for some rain before the Belmont, which could lead to off-track conditions. That’s what occurred at the Derby, so the two favorites have experience with slick surfaces, as does a longshot that fans should know about.

That horse is Uncaged, who happens to be a half-sibling of Journalism—they have the same father but different mothers. Uncaged has twice run on muddy tracks and has twice won on muddy tracks. That includes his very first race in August 2024, which just happened to be at Saratoga, so he’ll step into a familiar environment on Saturday. Even with that, the colt is tied with a horse named Heart of Honor as the biggest underdog in the race. This English-bred thoroughbred is the lone foreigner in the field, and he’s hoping to become the first foreign horse since 1998 to win the Belmont.

In between the favorites and the two biggest longshots are four horses looking to call themselves American Classic winners. There is Baeza, who had a surprising third-place finish at the Kentucky Derby after being entered only due to a late scratch by another horse. Baeza is hoping to follow in the footsteps of his half-brother Dornoch, who won the 2024 Belmont;  another of his half-brothers, Mage, won the 2023 Kentucky Derby.

Another contender is Rodriguez, who is trained by the legendary Bob Baffert, who has the most Kentucky Derby wins (six) and the most Preakness victories (eight) of all time. He’s also won the Belmont four times and would love to rise up that leaderboard—James Rowe Sr. holds the record for most wins (eight).

Then there is Hill Road, who will start on the rail and appear in his sixth race at six different racetracks. Fortunately, he has arguably the best jockey in Irad Ortiz Jr. He’s been named the top jockey in five of the last seven years, which is like winning an MVP award five out of seven seasons. Hill Road’s last start saw him win a race called the Peter Pan Stakes, so he’s hoping Saratoga Race Course becomes his version of Neverland on Saturday.

Finally, there is a thoroughbred named Crudo, which is Spanish for raw, and there’s a culinary connection with this horse—one of his owners is celebrity chef Bobby Flay. The Food Network star knows his way around the racetrack as well as he does around the kitchen, and he already has a Belmont victory to his name, courtesy of his horse Creator winning in 2016. But Crudo is certainly not raw as a racehorse. He’s coming off back-to-back victories after going unraced as a juvenile. He also has pedigree in his favor as the son of 2018 Triple Crown champion Justify, so Crudo looms as a potentially overlooked horse that could surprise many.

The eight-horse Belmont field will go to post at 7:04 p.m. ET, and this is the second of three years that Saratoga will host, with Belmont Park slated to reopen in September 2026. The purse for the 2025 Belmont Stakes remains the same as last year at $2 million, with the victor receiving a share of $1.2 million. This is the 157th running of the race, making it the oldest of the Triple Crown events, and it’s shaping up, perhaps, to be the most exciting. It will be broadcast on FOX Sports and streamed on FoxSports.com.