The 156th running of the Belmont Stakes will be different at Saratoga, to say the least, and the shorter one-and-a-quarter mile length does seem as if it will help Preakness winner Seize the Grey and Derby winner Mystik Dan, both of whom have for the past couple of weeks been in residence at the Spa, along with the rather surprising top favorite Mindframe for tomorrow’s running.
It will remain an irony of this running of the Belmont that neither of the top two favorites—Sierra Leone and Mindframe, at 9-5 and 7-2, respectively, and breaking from neighboring stalls far outside in the gate—won this year’s Derby or Preakness. But because of the high estimation in which that pair are held at the track, it remains a strength of the race that the Derby and Preakness winners are also in the field. Good for racing, in other words, the more the merrier, and there is a sense that anything could happen. But before we get into what Sierra Leone or Mindframe have to do to live up to their chances as seen by the NYRA oddsmakers, here’s the refresher on the post positions and the morning line.
(Post Position, Morning Line Odds)
1. Seize the Grey, (8-1)
2. Resilience, (10-1)
3. Mystik Dan, (5-1)
4. The Wine Steward, (15-1)
5. Antiquarian, (12-1)
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6. Dornoch, (15-1)
7. Protective, (20-1)
8. Honor Marie, (12-1)
9. Sierra Leone, (9-5)
10. Mindframe, (7/2)
(Source: NYRA, June 7, 2024)
To parse where Derby winner Mystik Dan and Preakness winner Seize the Grey are in the estimation of Saratoga’s oddsmakers, and where they are in relation to the top two favorites Sierra Leone and Mindframe, it’s useful to take a look at all four favorites’ implied probability of winning tomorrow’s Belmont.
To begin, let’s admit that any Kentucky Derby winner earns a certain regard up in the national stratosphere of oddsmakers, no matter what. But a Derby win is, also, a win by a very young horse immersed in total chaos, emphasis on the chaos, and that win can be had by pretty much any horse with the right grit to withstand the gauntlet. Eight weeks back, surprising many people, that horse was Mystik Dan. The winner may not be the fastest horse, or the “best” horse, or even the horse that the trackside know-it-alls will tell us will win. So it is with Mystik Dan.
His Derby was a fair upset, and he did beat Sierra Leone, but it’s still up to him to prove to us that it wasn’t a fluke. He has some seriously tough competition to beat tomorrow to tell us that.
To the numbers, then:
At 5-1, the 2024 Derby winner carries an implied probability of 16.7% to win this Belmont at Saratoga, or so the thinking goes within the NYRA oddsmaker eagle’s nest. It is a surprisingly low probability for any Derby winner, but there it is. By contrast, Mystik Dan’s place horse and the top favorite for the 2024 Belmont—Sierra Leone, at 9-5—carries a 35.7% implied probability of winning tomorrow’s race.
Put another way, the NYRA oddsmakers think that Sierra Leone, with his abundant abilities and proven tactical toolkit, has a couple of points more than twice the chance (than “lucky newbie” Mystik Dan currently has) to take tomorrow’s race. This fact will not be making trainer Kenny McPeek nor any other Mystik Dan connection very comfortable about the morrow. But it does tell us many things, for instance, about what we might best do with the Derby winner in an exotic play, which we’ll leave for later.
Now for the other two top favorites’ implied probabilities: Mindframe’s very tidy 7-2 morning line rung carries an implied probability of 22.2% to win, or 13.5% less of a probability to win than that of the heavily favored Sierra Leone, in the view of the NYRA. That is a big, clear margin the NYRA is giving us there between the first and second favorites.
At 8-1, Preakness winner and fourth-favorite in the morning line Sieze the Grey has been assigned an implied probability of 11.1% to win tomorrow, or exactly half the probability to win that Mindframe has been assessed to have. That 11.1% is also just shy of a third of the chance that top favorite Sierra Leone carries, but, at this point, who’s counting?
Certainly not Sieze the Grey’s veteran trainer D. Wayne Lukas, 88, pictured above dressed to the cowboy nines in his awesome save-the-day Stetson. He will not be worried about the numbers on his trainee, because the esteemed Hall of Fame trainer knows that he and the 3000-plus owners of Sieze the Grey are fortunate to have won the Preakness and to be in this next stakes. His nearly 4800-plus career wins, including a record seven Preaknesses, and, more to the point, four Belmont Stakes, mean that he is thoroughly immune to “worry” that might jolt and jitter a younger trainer. Which very much does not mean that Lukas doesn’t care to win. He cares a great deal, as he never hesitates to say.
And then, as ever in racing, there are the soulful details within all of these athletes that make the sport the joyous tumble that it is. These are the talents that lie within each horse beyond his or her numbers, and occasionally those elements can factor into a big race in a delightfully surprising way. So it is with Seize the Grey, or at least, so it was with Seize the Grey in the Preakness. It’s probably not to the Preakness winner’s advantage that he’s breaking from the rail, but there’s a certain sturdiness of mind about this athlete that seems to be adding to rather than subtracting from his chances to get up in the money.
If he gets off clean and has a good day, he certainly has the presence and the fortitude to get up in there and mess up the top three favorites’ expectations. That’s the element that will make this already-extraordinary Belmont a great race.
