Smarty Jones' quest for the Triple Crown last year created an unprecedented media frenzy at Belmont. Bill Frakes/SI
	SI.com's Belmont Stakes coverage Beech: Patience pays off for Afleet Alex Layden: Belmont is both blessed and cursed Beech: Classic moments in Belmont history Layden: It takes a horse with endurance to win SI Players: What a jockey (and horse) eats

The Belmont Stakes is both blessed and cursed.

Blessed, because it is inarguably one of the grandest annual events on the American sports landscape, the third leg of horse racing's venerable Triple Crown. It takes place every year in late spring at Belmont Park, a massive, brick-walled remnant of the halcyon days of the turf, set among towering maples within earshot of Manhattan. It is a setting that befits the grandeur of the event it hosts, a special place where you can hear the ghosts of Secretariat and Affirmed thundering down the long stretch.

Cursed, because every year it needs help from some special horse to occupy the minds of a sports-watching public that is inundated by a plethora of options and has developed the attention span of a gnat. At a mile-and-a-half, the Belmont Stakes is the greatest test of any champion horse -- in some ways, too much to ask -- but when there is no Triple Crown at stake, Belmont buzz falls to a hum.

Recent history has spoiled the event. In six of the last eight years, horses have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness and arrived in New York with a chance to become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978. Excitement has grown with each successive attempt, in part because the non-Triple Crown drought is now the longest in history (a milepost passed last year, when Birdstone nailed a flagging Smarty Jones in the final strides), but mostly because the gods have provided the public with such remarkable stories.

In 2002, trainer Bob Baffert came to Belmont with War Emblem, a horse purchased by a Saudi prince less than three weeks before the Kentucky Derby "Everybody buys the Derby,'' said the late Ahmed bin Salman on the first Saturday in May, and whatever you think of the man, truer words were never spoken. A front-runner, War Emblem stumbled out of the gate and never had a chance.

In 2003, Funny Cide brought his owners to the big track in their caravan of yellow school buses. A cheap gelding with nasty speed, Funny won the Derby and Preakness for a collection of high school friends and their railbird friends. It was delectable eating for a public that had grown tired of spoiled athletes making eight-figure salaries. Empire Maker beat him in the slop and ever ran again. Funny Cide continues to campaign at age 5.

And then last year, Smarty Jones, a better horse than either War Emblem or Funny Cide, easily won the Derby and destroyed the field in the Preakness. "This one looks like he's ready to finish the deal,'' said trainer D. Wayne Lukas in the days before the Belmont. His owner was a wheelchair-bound old man with oxygen tubes in his nose, and the horse nearly died in a starting-gate accident when he was starting to train. His trainer and jockey had never been to the Derby. More good stuff.