Belmont Stakes Belmont Stakes The Belmont Stakes is an American Grade I stakes Thoroughbred horse race held on the first or second Saturday in June at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York. It is a horse race, open to three-year-old Thoroughbreds. Colts and geldings carry a weight of ; fillies carry . The race, nicknamed The Test of the Champion, and The Run for the Carnations, is the third and final leg of the Triple Crown and is held five weeks after the Kentucky Derby and three weeks after the Preakness Stakes. The 1973 Belmont Stakes and Triple Crown winner Secretariat holds
Belmont Stakes tradition is similar to the singing of the state song at the post parades of the first two Triple Crown races: "My Old Kentucky Home" at the Kentucky Derby and "Maryland, My Maryland" at the Preakness Stakes. The change of song gave rise to "the myth of Mamie O'Rourke," a reference to a character in the lyrics of "The Sidewalks of New York." Before American Pharoah won the Triple Crown in 2015, some claimed that changing the official Belmont song "cursed" the Triple Crown and was why no horse had won since Affirmed in 1978. Others note that there was