Carrying the colors of Amerman Racing, Kentucky-bred Trikari captured the 75th running of the $750,000 Belmont Derby Invitational S. (G1) in a determined effort.
Ridden by John Velazquez and trained by Graham Motion, Trikari stalked the pace before moving to the leader on the far turn. He grabbed the lead in upper stretch and battled through the lane with the stubborn pacesetter White Palomino to his inside. At the finish, Trikari prevailed by a head in a final time of 1:54.71 for the 1 3/16-mile turf affair for 3-year-olds.
Motion, who also trained Trikari’s graded stakes-winning dam, Dynamic Holiday, expected a top effort from his charge.
“Honestly, I’m not surprised,” said Motion. “My only concern was if he’d get the distance, but this horse, he really doesn’t do anything wrong. I mean he is so impressive in the morning. Physically, he is such a big, strong, good-looking horse. I trained the mare, and I didn’t think the distance was going to be an issue, but you never know.”
A son of Oscar Performance, Trikari was bred in Kentucky by Michael Slezak and Amy Boll. He was a $27,500 graduate of the 2022 OBS October Yearling Sale. With his latest win, Trikari is a winner in four of seven lifetime starts. He has banked $996,630 for Amerman Racing. In addition to the Belmont Derby Invitational, Trikari also annexed the American Turf S. (G2) at Churchill Downs and finished third in the Penn Mile S. (G3) at Penn National.
Winning rider John Velazquez said of Trikari’s win in the Belmont Derby, “I wanted to make sure somebody else went [to the front] instead of me. He settled nicely, though, and at the five-sixteenths pole, I made sure I put a little pressure on the horse in front because he was just waiting. I got him kind of quickly and then he came back at me and mine put his head down again. It was nice.”