The best race in the Triple Crown series is Saturday at Belmont Park. Unsurprisingly, it’s called the Belmont Stakes.
And we bet you want to know what time the race is going to be. The weather usually doesn’t change except by a minute or two from year to year, so unless you have the memory of a goldfish (you already miss Ted Lasso), you kind of know. But not his year.
It starts around 7:02 p.m. on the East Coast, about 15 minutes later than usual.
OK, let’s analyze them.
That means 6:02 p.m. for those of you in Chicago or the Central Time Zone.
That means 5:02 p.m. for those of you in the Denver area or the Mountain time zone.
And, for the people we value the most, it’s 4:02 p.m. for those of you in Los Angeles.
But that’s not the most important thing to remember. This is the first year the race has moved to Fox from NBC. Let’s repeat that, search for the race on Fox. Of course, it doesn’t make sense to have the first two legs of the Triple Crown on one network and then move them to another network for the final leg.
There’s a reason for that, though. Fox owns about a quarter of NYRA Bets, which is the ADW (advance deposit betting) arm of the New York Racing Assn. One would expect when the NBC contract with the other races expired that Fox would make a solid play for them.
And there is another big wrinkle.
Tom Durkin, who retired from the announcer’s booth since 2014, will call the races broadcast on Fox beginning at 4 p.m. ET. You can do the math for the rest of the time zones. Durkin called about 80,000 runs in his career.
“The Belmont Stakes has been an iconic part of sports culture for over 150 years,” Durkin said. “There’s nothing quite like the energy and excitement around Belmont Park with a Triple Crown on the line. It’s the pinnacle of excitement.
Apotheosis?
Oxford Languages says: “the high point in the development of something; climax or climax.
OK, just to be clear, our next times are all local time, i.e. New York. Races at Belmont begin around 11:20 a.m. Coverage starts at 11 a.m. and lasts until 4 p.m. on FS1. At 4pm it’s on Fox and it goes until 7.30pm Then, if you can’t get enough, there’s coverage of the final race on FS2 from 7.30pm to 8pm
Again, just one more time, it’s on Fox. In Los Angeles, Channel 11; New York, channel 5; Chicago, channel 32 and Denver, channel 31.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.