After an exciting confrontation between Catholic Boy and Analize It, the first took the Belmont Derby Invitational, a major horse race held every year at the Belmont Racecourse (New York, United States)
Catholic Boy was proclaimed yesterday the great winner in the Belmont Derby Invitational, after a great test; with the jockey Javier Castellano riding, the three-year-old reached the finish line first in a time of 1'59'28.
The second classified was his great rival Analize It, ridden by José Luis Ortiz, and in third place he qualified Hunting Horn (with Ryan L. Moore). The race, of 2,000 meters and classified in Group 1, had an important economic endowment of 1,200,000 dollars.
Another of the races that took place in this New York day, the Belmont Oaks Invitational, also generated a lot of interest: on this occasion the winning horse was Athena, with the mounts of Ryan L. Moore. Thewayiam (with John R. Velázquez) and Chipolata (Manuel Franco) had to settle for the second and third positions respectively. The Belmont Oaks is a race also from Group 1 and with the same distance as the previous one. Its award for this year has been 1,000,000 dollars.
Finally, the other great triumph of the afternoon was taken by Limousine Liberal (with Jose Luiz Ortiz) in the Belmont Spring Championship (G2), with a distance of 1,400m. The second to reach the finish line was Withmore (with Ricardo Santana Jr) while the exemplary Eye Luv Lulu (with Irad Ortiz Jr.) qualified in third position.
These races were part of the Stars & Stripes Racing Festival, a well-known turf festival that takes place every year at the Belmont Park racecourse.