In a fine, sporting turn of the Triple Crown season, the 2025 Belmont Stakes favorite Journalism, at 8-5 in the Saratoga morning line, will face both the horse that blazed by him to win the Kentucky Derby, Sovereignty (2-1), and the show horse that was within strides of passing him in that race, Baeza (4-1), all pictured above in the middle of that wet battle on May 3. Talk about racing kismet.

The “Big Sandy,” as the brawny Belmont track has been nicknamed by the racing community, is still under renovation, and thus has added this other seemingly small, but deceptively big, similarity to the Derby. For the second year in a row, the Belmont’s $2-million Belmont Stakes, will be a fair imitation of the Kentucky Derby at one-and-a-quarter miles. What’s a quarter-mile? Another to put that would be to say, if Baeza had had another quarter-mile in front of him in the Kentucky Derby, Journalism would be the show horse.

And another way to put that would be to say, although Saratoga has drawn a modestly-sized field, it’s jam-packed with athletic talent. But before we get into what Bob Baffert and his onrushing front-runner Rodriguez have in mind for the top three, here are the freshly drawn post positions and the Saratoga morning line.

Post Position, Horse, Trainer, Jockey, Morning Line

1. Hill Road, Chad Brown, Irad Ortiz, Jr., 10-1
2. Sovereignty, William F. Mott, Junior Alvarado, 2-1
3. Rodriguez, Bob Baffert, Mike Smith, 6-1
4. Uncaged, Todd Pletcher, Luis Saez, 30-1
5. Crudo, Todd Pletcher, John Velazquez, 15-1
6. Baeza, John Shirreffs, Flavien Prat, 4-1
7. Journalism, Michael McCarthy, Umberto Rispoli, 8-5
8. Heart of Honor, Jamie Osborne, Saffie Osborne, 30-1

(Source: NYRA, 6/3/2025)

Piquant in the Saratoga draw is the fact that Journalism will be breaking just a stall to the outside of the horse that nearly beat him in the Derby, and both of them have a fair shot at settling in the early going. But the fact that matters more is that Journalism ran back in the Preakness, and did it quite well, just two weeks back.

Sovereignty’s Derby victory in the last furlong over Journalism was quite decisive, and the horse came out of the race well, but trainer Bill Mott and the Sovereignty connections decided with fair dispatch that Sovereignty would sit out the Preakness to return now. John Shirreffs and the Baeza team decided the same. Rodriguez missed both the Derby and the Preakness with his foot injury, which has been given a sterling stamp of full recovery. The point, which we’ll be hearing about ad infinitum this week, is that the four most dangerous horses to Journalism in the Belmont are spanking fresh. And he’s not.