Golden Tempo, Napoleon Solo & 6 takeaways from Triple Crown

As big a surprise as Golden Tempo was in winning not just one but two Triple Crown races, he is poised to maintain a trend that has been rock solid for more than a half-century.

By pairing a Belmont Stakes victory Saturday with his Kentucky Derby upset, the colt trained by history maker Cherie DeVaux has moved to the front of his 3-year-old class. That is not merely opinion. There is factual backing for Golden Tempo’s championship claim.

Zipse: DeVaux has 2 best 3-year-olds in U.S.

It is one of a half-dozen takeaways from this year’s Triple Crown campaign.

Eclipse Award in waiting

More than half the year may be left, but history says there is a 93% chance that Golden Tempo already has clinched a championship.

In the Eclipse Awards era, which began in 1971, 28 horses before Golden Tempo won at least two of the three Triple Crown races. Twenty-six of them were voted the best 3-year-old males.

Exceptionally, Riva Ridge won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont in 1972, but thanks to a pair of wins vs. older horses, the championship went to Key to the Mint. Tabasco Cat had Preakness and Belmont scores, but seven losses in 1994 included a third-place finish in the Travers to eventual division champion and horse of the year Holy Bull.

Sovereignty was the fourth consecutive double-classic winner to be voted horse of the year. This is not to suggest Golden Tempo is there yet, especially since that modest streak began only 12 years ago with California Chrome. American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018 went one better by being Triple Crown champions.

Triple the betting value

Golden Tempo was 23-1 to win the Derby and 6-1 in the Belmont. Napoleon Solo scored at 7-1 in the Preakness. This was the eighth year ever when each of the three winners of the Triple Crown races paid at least 5-1.

Curiously enough, this did not occur for the first time until 1996, and it has happened twice in the last three years. Mystik Dan (18-1), Seize the Grey (9-1) and Dornoch (17-1) put 2024 on this list.

For any player who bet $2 that Golden Tempo would win the Kentucky Derby and then let it roll into Napoleon Solo in the Preakness and then again into Golden Tempo in the Belmont, the payout was $2,286.30.

Chalk burn can be painful

Renegade, who finished third at 8-5 on Saturday in the Belmont, was the fourth consecutive losing favorite in a classic and the 11th in the last 12. Even-money favorite Journalism, the winner of the 2025 Preakness, was the lone exception.

This was as unproductive a year for favorites in the three big races as there has been since Justify was the top choice at every step of his 2018 Triple Crown.

In the Kentucky Derby, Further Ado finished 11th at 5-1, the longest odds for a favorite in that race since Orb won at 5-1 in 2013. That, coincidentally, was the first of six straight years when the top choice won the Derby, ending with Justify.

Taj Mahal, who wound up 10th at 9-2, was the worst-placed Preakness favorite since Jaipur finished 10th in 1962.

At least 8-5 Renegade hit the board by finishing third in the Belmont, where favorites have finished in the top three every year since Exaggerator was 11th in 2016.

Names are not so big … yet

DeVaux and Chad Summers trained the winners of this year’s classics. Neither has won an Eclipse Award, although DeVaux has earned her place among the contenders for 2026 trainer of the year. And yes, if that were to happen, she would be the first woman to win it.

Before this spring it had been 10 years since the Triple Crown series did not welcome a former champion trainer into the winner’s circle. In 2016, Nyquist won the Derby for Doug O’Neill, Exaggerator the Preakness for Keith Desormeaux and Creator the Belmont for the late Christophe Clément.

A buzz horse or a fizz?

Even though his form has regressed, Chief Wallabee was a wise-guy horse for the Derby and the Belmont. Sure enough, his form kept going the wrong way.

Since his debut win in January at Gulfstream Park, the Constitution colt trained by Bill Mott lost by a neck finishing second at 5-2 in the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth, by a half-length coming home third at 2-1 in the Florida Derby (G1), by three finishing fourth at 7-1 in the Kentucky Derby and by 8 1/2 lengths crossing fourth at 5-1 in the Belmont.

It is way too harsh to say he is the second coming of Hidden Scroll, right?

Where do they go now?

As races go, the usual suspects beckon this summer for the 3-year-old class. The Haskell (G1), Jim Dandy (G2), Travers (G1) and Pennsylvania Derby (G1) are the biggies.

It might be surprising that the Travers, which has embraced the badging of mid-summer derby, is not the race that has been won lately by the most classic winners.

Starting with American Pharoah in 2015, the Haskell (G1) has welcomed six classic victors to the Monmouth Park winner’s circle. That does, however, come with a couple asterisks. There is no dispute about Exaggerator in 2016, Dornoch in 2024 and Journalism last year. The footnotes come with Authentic in 2020 and Mandaloun in 2021, since they were not anointed Kentucky Derby winners until weeks and months after their Haskell victories.

The Travers is a little less complicated. Since American Pharoah was upset by Keen Ice in 2015, four classic winners added triumphs in Saratoga’s signature race. The COVID asterisk comes into play with Tiz the Law having won a shortened Belmont Stakes in 2020. Then came Essential Quality, Arcangelo and Sovereignty, who also were Belmont Stakes victors.

If the Breeders’ Cup Classic is the ultimate goal for Golden Tempo and Napoleon Solo, their connections hope they will be exceptions to recent precedent. Only American Pharoah in 2015 and Authentic in 2020 parlayed their successes in Triple Crown races into wins against older rivals in the biggest of the championship races.