RANDY Hill said it best. And said it for everyone.

“You’re at Saratoga. You’re at the Belmont. It’s electrifying,” said the co-owner of Belmont Stakes winner Dornoch. “There is no place like Saratoga.”

And there had never been Saratoga like this.

Due an ongoing renovation project at Belmont Park, the New York Racing Association moved the Belmont Stakes and four days of top-tier racing to Saratoga last weekend. Dornoch topped it all, with a game half-length win in the Belmont Stakes on an electrified day in upstate New York. The 14-race card and four-day festival enticed the best of the sport – owners, trainers, jockeys, horses and fans. And a World Series champion.

“I’ll put this up there with anything I’ve ever done,” co-owner Jayson Werth claimed, a World Series champion with the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies. “This is the top of sports. Horse racing is the most underrated sport there is. This is as big as it gets. The emotions you feel when you play in a playoff game, when you win a World Series game, it is the top of sports.”

Dornoch rose to the top of the sport with an assertive trip and a determined finish in the third leg of the Triple Crown. Shortened from 12 furlongs to a mile and a quarter - due to Saratoga’s configuration - the Belmont attracted a 10-horse field including Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan, Preakness winner Seize the Grey, Derby runner-up Sierra Leone and the unbeaten upstart Mindframe.

Perfect passage

Jockey Luis Saez erased bad tactics in the Blue Grass and bad luck in the Kentucky Derby, engineering a perfect passage for Dornoch. The full-brother to 2023 Kentucky Derby winner Mage outlasted the wandering Mindframe and the bumped and battered favourite Sierra Leone to earn his first Grade 1 stakes win.

“It’s crazy. It’s crazy. I’ve believed in him all this time,” trainer Danny Gargan said. “He got a horrible trip in the Derby. I got him beat in the Blue Grass. For him to come back and do this for me after I messed him up. It’s crazy. It’s crazy.”

Dornoch broke sharply from post six and Saez made sure he wasn’t taking back like his squandered fourth in the Blue Grass or getting forced back like his bungled 10th in the Derby. Not this time. Saez crouched low and tight, his hands light and loose and nudged Dornoch to a stalking spot just Seize the Grey and just in front of Mindframe. Passing the wire, Saez had written the script. Outside one horse, stalking, clear sailing.

Seize The Grey led an unchanged order through a half-mile in 47.25secs and three-quarters in 1m 10.67secs.

Midway on the turn, Saez made the first move to get first run, pouncing outside Seize the Grey who offered little resistance. By the eighth pole, Dornoch was skimming the rail and Mindframe was drifting out away from Irad Ortiz’s left-handed whip.

At the 16th pole, Mindframe repositioned and angled back toward Dornoch, making up most of the ground he had thrown away. Most. Dornoch, game and straight, held him off by a half-length. Sierra Leone, bumped at the start and again at the head of the stretch, finished a length back in third.

“Better post. We were expecting a good break from there, we were thinking of taking the lead, but we knew they had a lot of speed from the inside, which was great because we had a target,” Saez said. “He’s a nice horse, he always tries, he’s got a big heart, and he keeps learning. He’s a horse who when he’s got pressure, he wants to fight. When he’s alone, he waits. When he feels pressure, he gets going. Today was perfect.”

Owned by West Paces Racing, R. A. Hill Stable, Belmar Racing and Breeding, Two Eight Racing and Pine Racing Stable, Dornoch finished the 10 furlongs in 2m 1.64secs.

“You win the Belmont, that’s something,” Hill said. “Saratoga, when I first bought horses I said, ‘I’m going to buy one horse and win at Saratoga.’ That was 25 years ago and about 300 horses ago. This is a win for the little guys. We all know the big guys who have the money and 100, 200, 300 horses. Danny doesn’t have that. I don’t have that. Jayson certainly doesn’t have that.”

Werth retired from baseball in 2017 and began dabbling in owning horses a few years later, starting Two Eight Racing, a nod to his number in baseball. The third-generation baseball player went to the Keeneland September yearling sale in 2022 and a good, old-fashioned horse deal was brokered at the bar.

“Horse racing found me. I was a couple of years retired and looking for something to do. I started getting into it at a lower level, went to the Keeneland sales and started buying some fillies,” Werth said. “I run into Danny and his guys at the bar at the end of the day and they say, ‘You should get into this horse, it’s going to be a Derby horse.’

“They always say that. I was in the mood, and I was saying yes to a lot of things. Just being in the Belmont is a huge accomplishment. It’s the top of horse racing, the top of sports. Out of this world.”

WHEN entries came out for the Grade 1 $1 million Manhattan Stakes – the traditional lead-in event before the Belmont – it looked like a showdown between trainers Charlie Appleby and Chad Brown.

The two, certainly at the head of the list of top trainers in the world, entered half of the field of eight. Appleby sent out Godolphin’s duo Measured Time and Nations Pride, while Brown countered with Program Trading and I’m Very Busy.

NYRA played up the “rivalry,” which may or may not exist beyond the usual want-to-win mentality of a horse trainer. They quoted both in pre-race notes and received the expected fairly neutral yet complimentary remarks.

“As far as taking Chad and taking the team on - this is what racing wants,” Appleby said. “You want to see the best horses from around the world.”

“I respect him,” Brown said. “His horses are going to beat some of mine and mine are going to beat some of his. He’s a great trainer with great horses and a great team that travels with those horses. When they come into the paddock, you know it and you know they’re well-prepared.”

Chalk this round up to Appleby, in a big way.

Measured Time and Nations Pride finished 1-2 in the extended nine-furlong Manhattan – shortened from its usual 1 1/4 miles – with Brown’s Program Trading fifth and I’m Very Busy seventh.

Relief

Appleby breathed a sigh of relief after William Buick rode Measured Time to a two-length win over his stablemate, and it had nothing to do with the head-to-head showdown. Godolphin’s runners the first two days – Siskany in the Grade 2 Belmont Gold Cup and English Rose in the Grade 1 New York Stakes – finished well back. Three runners in Belmont Day undercard races also lost, although both Mysterious Night in the Grade 3 Poker and Star Of Mystery in the Grade 1 Jaipur were placed.

“We’re just delighted to get one across the line today,” Appleby said. “It was a long weekend, but he was the most important horse of the team. I can’t thank everyone here at Saratoga enough, and everyone in America. They’ve been great and tremendously supportive.”

Measured Time won as the 3/1 second choice behind favoured Program Trading. He hadn’t been out since a fourth in the Dubai Turf on March 30th at Meydan.

“This was our most confident race of the meet this weekend,” Appleby said. “Measured Time is a horse that is, as you certainly know well, a half-brother to Rebel’s Romance. We’ve earmarked this for some time thinking that the American tracks would suit him.

“Obviously, we saw what he did in Dubai. Those kind of tracks, nice level tracks, suit him. He’s a big-striding horse. It’s a decision we made and then it was let him get on with it today and try and make our own run rather than get him in a tangle. You try and organise a horse like him, and he finds it hard.”

KENNY McPeek toyed with the idea of running Thorpedo Anna against the boys in the Belmont. The only problem was he already had a runner for the final jewel of the Triple Crown in Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan.

So off Thorpedo Anna went into the Acorn, lengthened from its former one-mile trip at Belmont to nine furlongs at Saratoga. Fresh from a front-running victory over last year’s two-year-old champion Just F Y I at the same trip in the Kentucky Oaks, Thorpedo Anna sat off that same rival in the Acorn before blowing the field away.

Under Brian Hernandez Jr., the daughter of Fast Anna improved her record to five-from-six with her five and a half length win over Grade 1 winner Leslie’s Rose.

“The first thought was, ‘Dang, I could have run her in the Belmont,’” McPeek said. “I really felt I could have. She makes it easy.”

Hernandez, who scored a historic double winning the Derby and Oaks five weeks prior, relished the opportunity to ride the filly again.

“I believe we have a superstar on our hands,” he said. “Those are put in a rare air, but she seems to be one of those fillies. When the announcer calls you brilliant in a Grade 1, you know it tends to make you believe that you are a part of something really magical. Something really special.”

NATIONAL Treasure will likely occupy a stall in the main stallion barn at Spendthrift Farm in Lexington by this time next year. That much was already certain, after the operation run by the late B. Wayne Hughes’ family bought into the son of Quality Road after his victory in last year’s Preakness Stakes. Now he’ll go with even better credentials after a sharp return off the layoff in the Grade 1, $1 million Hill ‘n’ Dale Metropolitan Handicap.

Shipped to New York from Southern California by trainer Bob Baffert, National Treasure showed no signs of rust dusting off his five rivals in the Met Mile. He won by over six lengths under jockey Flavien Prat in 1m 35.12secs.

They love it

“Some of the best horses we’ve have, Authentic and those types, they never had a bad day, and this horse hasn’t had a bad day,” said Tom Ryan, representing SF Racing and one of the eight ownership groups in National Treasure. “It’s a grind, right? It’s not a grind to them. They enjoy it, they love it, they train, they’re into it. He wants to do more. You watch this horse training out there and he wants to do more. We couldn’t be prouder of him.

“And we’re Quality Road fans to the core. We’ve (SF Racing) got seven or eight mares in foal to Quality Road. We’re proud of this and proud of Spendthrift for taking a risk and buying into the horse after the Preakness. That play is working out beautifully for them. This is a stallion-making race. We’ve got a classic, we’ve got a Met Mile. We feel very good about this going forward and we kept a piece. We’re in this for the long haul. This is exciting.”

RESOLUTE Racing’s John Stewart spent his first morning in Saratoga checking on his horses in the barn area, where he also bumped into trainer Christophe Clement a few hours before Didia ran in the Grade 1 New York Stakes.

“Christophe told me that she’s the best turf horse in training right now, that it’s going to be hard to beat her,” said Stewart, who owns half of the Argentinian-bred mare with Merriebelle Stable.

“When another trainer is saying that about your horse it’s pretty good.”

Didia proved pretty good in the New York, co-feature on the Friday card that also included Thorpedo Anna’s victory in the Grade 1 Acorn and Chili Flag’s score in the Grade 1 Just A Game. Didia topped a deep field of 13, adding the New York to her win two back in the Grade 2 Pegasus World Cup Filly and Mare Turf.

Trained at Keeneland by Ignacio Correas IV, the six-year-old daughter of Orpen had her conditioner thinking about his own accomplishments along with another run in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf come November.

“I came here 24 years ago, and I never thought in my life that I would win a Breeders’ Cup, or a Spinster or a New York Stakes,” Correas said.