Jayson Werth is a World Series champion and now the co-owner of a Belmont Stakes winning racehorse. Werth saw his horse, Dornoch, defeat the odds (17-1) to win the final leg of 2024’s Triple Crown at New York’s Saratoga Race Course.
Dornoch moved to the front of the pack out of the gates and was neck-and-neck with the Preakness Stakes winning Seize the Grey until pulling away down the final stretch. Another horse, Mindframe, pushed Dornoch towards the end but could not take the pole position before the finish line.
Werth, a former Washington National, won a championship with the Philadelphia Phillies in 2008 and was just as happy to see his horse victorious on Saturday.
“I would put it right up there with winning [the World Series],” Werth told ESPN. “Horse racing is the most underrated sport in the world, bar none. It’s the biggest game: You get the Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont. We just won the Belmont. This is as good as it gets in horse racing. It’s as good as it gets in sports.”
Luis Saez was the winning jockey in Dornoch’s saddle. The victory will reportedly net Werth and his co-owners $1.2 million in prize money.
The Nationals called Werth a “legend” in a tweet accompanied by a photo of the outfielder looking much more like a dapper rockstar than a baseball player.
legend pic.twitter.com/rCfpej9Tit
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) June 8, 2024
Werth initially took up horse racing as a hobby used to battle the boredom of post-retirement life. The big stage, like at the Belmont Stakes, helps remind him of his days playing in MLB’s most important postseason games.
“It has some fragrance of the World Series,” Werth told the Associated Press in May. “Things are totally different now. We’re at the barns, roads are blocked off, there’s security everywhere. It’s definitely heightened, and you get the sense, ‘This is it, this is the highest level of the sport.’”
Werth owns 10 percent of Dornoch and holds other minority stakes in several other horses. His “Two Eight Racing” stable is named after the number 28 jersey he wore with the Phillies and Nationals.
Dornoch also ran in the 2024 Kentucky Derby, finishing 10th of 20 horses.
