#Tiz the Law cruises to victory at Belmont Stakes

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Tiz the Law, with jockey Manny Franco, wins the Belmont Stakes.
AP

To the roar of nobody, Tiz the Law galloped to victory in the 152nd Belmont Stakes.

In a race unlike any other, the New-York bred Tiz the Law captured the first jewel of the Triple Crown in a year when horse racing tradition was flipped on its head because of the coronavirus pandemic.

With Manny Franco up in his Belmont Stakes debut, Tiz the Law surged past Tap It to Win around the only turn and never looked back. Trainer Barclay Tagg and the 3-year-old’s owners from Sackatoga Stables earned the Belmont Stakes win that fell through their grasp with a Triple Crown-chasing Funny Cide in 2003.

As they came down the backstretch, they did so in near-silence. The only sounds were the ones that are usually drowned out by 90,000-plus fans screaming their heads off: track announcer John Imbriale narrating the race, the humming of a helicopter overhead, the frantic hoofs beating down on the dirt and jockeys cracking the whip.

Post-race hugs and handshakes were replaced by fist bumps and elbow bumps, the purse was cut from $1.5 million to $1 million and the distance was 1 ¹/₈ miles around one turn — three furlongs shorter than the regular 1 ½ miles around two turns — but the win counted all the same.

Despite racing in New York being suspended for 2 ¹/₂ months, it was Belmont that kicked off the Triple Crown for the first time ever. So instead of Belmont Park being the place where Triple Crown dreams often went to die, on this Saturday it was where that dream officially began for Tiz the Law.

The road ahead includes the Kentucky Derby, re-scheduled for Sept. 5, and the Preakness on Oct. 3 — setting up the trio of races to be run over a stretch of 16 weeks instead of the regular demanding five-week period. Trainers may choose to run their thoroughbreds in the Haskell Stakes at Monmouth in July or the Travers Stakes at Saratoga in August as warmups for the other two legs of the Triple Crown, but those decisions remain to be determined.

There was even more uncertainty leading into Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, as most horses in the field were coming off long layoffs — as long as 140 days, in the case of Max Player, while Sole Volante was the exception, having raced at Gulfstream Park just 10 days ago.

After Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivered a televised “Riders up,” a hint of normalcy seeped in when the bugler played the call to post at 5:31. Reality quickly returned, though, when it echoed across the empty grandstand instead of sending the crowd into a frenzy.

The only seats filled were taken by the horses’ trainers, spread out in different boxes with face masks added to their regular dressy race-day attire.

Tiz the Law became the first New York-bred horse to win the Belmont Stakes in 138 years. Forester was the last to do it, in 1882, joining Fenian (1869) and Ruthless (1867) as the select group to accomplish the feat.

The only multiple graded stakes winner in the field of 10 horses, Tiz the Law was trained by the 82-year-old Tagg and owned by Sackatoga Stables. Tagg and Sackatoga Stables were hoping for a better result than the last time they teamed up on a Belmont favorite. They were one win away from a Triple Crown with Funny Cide in 2003 before the rain and Empire Maker ruined their shot at history.

It was once expected to be a field packed with talent, though the modified schedule and injuries took a toll on that. Bob Baffert — the trainer who has become a staple of Triple Crown races — was missing after both Nadal and Charlatan went down with injuries within the last month.

Another top contender, Maxfield, opted to sit out and instead point his training toward the Kentucky Derby.