Belmont Stakes Results 2016: Winner, Payouts and Order of Finish

At the Preakness, Exaggerator played the spoiler. With the whole field at the 2016 Belmont Stakes looking to take him down Saturday, he found out just how hard it is to be the favorite.

In one of the most thrilling finishes in recent Belmont history, Creator stormed from behind to surge past Destin and win the third Triple Crown race by a nose. He finished with a time of 2:28:51 and took home the fourth nose finish in the race's history. 

Hanging back for almost the entire race, jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. kicked his horse into high gear for a thrilling finish. Creator chased down Destin in the final straight stretch in what became a two-horse race and only edged him as they were crossing the finish line. Ortiz raised his hands in triumph, but a review was necessary to confirm the No. 13 post had come through.

The Steve Asmussen-trained horse came in with 16-1 odds. Creator's last race was at the Kentucky Derby, where he came in 13th place. 

ESPN Stats & Info contextualized the win:

Lani came through in third place. Governor Malibu and Stradivari rounded out the top five.

Place	Horse	Jockey	Trainer	Earnings	Win	Place	Show
1	Creator	Irad Ortiz Jr.	Steve Asmussen	$800,000	$34.80	$14.60	$9.40
2	Destin	Javier Castellano	Todd Pletcher	$280,000	-	$9.40	$6.20
3	Lani	Yutaka Take	Mikio Matsunaga	$150,000	-	-	$6.60
4	Governor Malibu	Joel Rosario	Christophe Clement	$100,000
5	Stradivari	John Velazquez	Todd Pletcher	$60,000
6	Brody's Cause	Luis Saez	Dale Romans	$45,000
7	Cherry Wine	Corey Lanerie	Dale Romans	$35,000
8	Gettysburg	Paco Lopez	Steve Asmussen	$30,000
9	Suddenbreakingnews	Mike Smith	Donnie Von Hemel
10	Trojan Nation	Aaron Gryder	Paddy Gallagher
11	Exaggerator	Kent Desormeaux	Keith Desormeaux
12	Seeking the Soul	Florent Geroux	Dallas Stewart
13	Forever D'Oro	Jose Ortiz	Dallas Stewart

Destin had spent most of the race battling near the front. Gettysburg ran first, with Destin in second, for the entire first mile. The crowd toward the front held a steady pace early, running the first quarter mile in just over 24 seconds and reaching the half at 48.48 seconds. That held throughout, with the quarter splits usually running in the 24- to 25-second range. 

Destin overtook Gettysburg after the mile mark, pulling away from the only wild card in the 13-horse field. The Todd Pletcher-trained colt then built a seemingly insurmountable lead before Creator came from behind.

All eyes were on Exaggerator—the 6-5 favorite, per AL.com—to see if he could continue his sterling Triple Crown run. The second-place finisher at the Kentucky Derby took down Nyquist at the Preakness Stakes—his first win in five tries against the then-undefeated colt. 

What was expected to be a head-to-head showdown for Horse of the Year sputtered out when Nyquist withdrew from the Belmont because of a high white blood cell count. It left Exaggerator all alone, facing several horses he'd already beaten.

Exaggerator was the only competitor who entered the race with better than 5-1 odds. He came in looking strong, with trainer Keith Desormeaux lauding his horse for being ready to go. 

“It’s very rare in this day and age for a horse to handle the Triple Crown so well,” Desormeaux said, per Ed McNamara of Newsday. “Exaggerator is very intelligent, very athletic, very sound and has the pedigree to get the distance. With all of his attributes, it doesn’t look like this third race will be a problem.”

In the end, the distance at Belmont Park proved to be a problem. Exaggerator ran a race that was largely similar to his previous two. He hung near the middle of the pack for the first mile, often jostling between fifth and sixth place as the crowd expected the straight-stretch turbo boost.

It never came. Exaggerator, perhaps struggling with the distance or exhausted after racing three times in five weeks, lacked the same burst. He wound up finishing more than 14 lengths off the lead in 11th place. Horse racing writer Steve Haskin compared Creator and Exaggerator:

The reality is the pre-race excitement paled in comparison to last year for a reason. American Pharoah ended a nearly four-decade Triple Crown drought. It was always going to be impossible to replicate the magic of seeing the first Triple Crown champion in such a long time. 

When Exaggerator ended the chance at seeing Nyquist become the second undefeated Triple Crown winner ever, the air went out of Belmont's sails a bit.

Luckily, the battle between Creator and Destin was good enough to temporarily make everyone forget the surrounding storylines. 

The win also only further muddies the Horse of the Year conversation, as Creator now has a claim to the title. It's almost a shame there isn't a fourth major race this year that would pit all three Triple Crown race winners against one another.

Even if things might have gone differently had Nyquist made the trip, there's no sense in dealing in hypotheticals here. Creator was brilliant in Elmont, New York, capping off the 2016 Crown season.

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Post-Race Reaction

Asmussen spoke after the race, per John Cherwa of the Los Angeles Times: “I was glad to see them put that number up as they came to wire together. Irad gave him a dream trip. He proved his worth today.”

“When I saw the 48 and 4/5th first half mile, I knew it gave Creator a shot,” Asmussen said.

Kent Desormeaux, who jockeyed Exaggerator, questioned his decision to hold his horse back, per the Associated Press (via ESPN.com): "I don't know if there would have been any difference in the outcome. When I picked him up at the quarter pole to try to win the race, there was nothing there."