When the New York Racing Association announced that the 2024 Belmont Stakes would be held at Saratoga Race Course because of the redevelopment of Belmont Park, some racing enthusiasts scoffed, suggesting that the shortened distance and different venue meant that the race wouldn’t be a “real” Belmont Stakes.

Jayson Werth, one of the people who raised the August Belmont Trophy in the Saratoga winner’s circle last June 8, had no such concerns. 

“What did I know?” says Werth, founder of Two Eight Racing and one of the owners of Dornoch, last year’s Belmont winner. “Dornoch was the first colt I ever bought, and he won the Belmont in the first year it was run at Saratoga. As far I’m concerned, the Belmont’s run at Saratoga.” 

Werth will be back at Saratoga this summer, not necessarily as an owner of a Belmont runner, but as an ambassador for the sport—one armed with money to buy at the Fasig-Tipton sales, a new partnership in Icon Racing, a new racing podcast, and enough enthusiasm to power all of Saratoga County. 

Werth has told his racing origin story many times over the last year: After retiring from Major League Baseball seven years ago, he, his family, and his World Series ring from the Philadelphia Phillies’ 2008 championship win moved to Florida. While golfing, he met Thoroughbred owner Richard Averill, and was “instantly intrigued” by the sport of horseracing. He partnered with Averill on some fillies and went to his first race as a part-owner at Tampa Bay Downs.

“I owned maybe a leg of the horse,” he says. He doesn’t remember the exact date, or even the name of the horse, but he does remember clearly what he felt that day. 

“I went into the paddock, and I was listening to the trainer talk to the jockey,” he says. “I didn’t even realize that they made a plan before the race—that was all new to me. Once they got to the track, I started pulling at my collar. I hadn’t felt that nervous since I’d played ball. I felt like I was back on the field again.” 

Watching his horse come down the stretch, he started screaming. “I was losing my mind,” he says. “And I realized that that part of my life—that excitement—had been missing. I had the same feelings that I had every day for 20 years as a ballplayer. Even though I knew nothing about the sport, I knew it was amazing.” 

Following that experience, Werth decided to swing for the fences and go big in horse racing. Enter trainer Danny Gargan. 

Werth had met Gargan through Averill, and he ran into him at the 2022 Keeneland September yearling sale. 

“I was like, ‘What’s going on, Danny?’ and he said, ‘We just bought this beautiful colt, and we’re going to take a shot at the Derby,’” Werth recalls. “I was super-green and had fallen in love with the sport. Who doesn’t buy into a colt that you think is going to win the Derby?” 

Looking back, Werth admits that he might have been an easy mark, but what could have ended up a cautionary tale of a racing newbie falling for the “Derby dream” pitch instead turned into a high-profile tale of racing success that the sport’s marketers could only dream of. 

Werth’s Two Eight Racing—he wore #28 as a baseball player—bought into that “beautiful colt” named Dornoch before the horse had ever run a race. Dornoch made his racing debut at Saratoga in July 2023, running second to the horse that would go on to win the next year’s Preakness Stakes, Seize the Grey. Four months later, Dornoch won his first stakes race, the Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, and, in addition to the winner’s share of the $250,000 purse, earned 10 Kentucky Derby qualifying points. The road to Louisville had begun. 

Dornoch earned 50 more points when he won the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park in March, keeping the dream alive and ensuring his entry into the Run for the Roses. 

But that dream died on the first Saturday in May last year. Dornoch and jockey Louis Saez drew the far inside post #1, a significant drawback in a 20-horse field, particularly for a horse that likes to run near the lead. Dornoch ended up finishing 10th. 

“The Derby was a big letdown,” Werth admits. “Everything was coming together, and we thought he could win, but then he drew post 1 and we were like, ‘All right. We’re not winning the Derby.’”

Dornoch skipped the Preakness two weeks later, and Werth and Dornoch’s other owners—Larry Connolly of West Paces Racing, Randy Hill of R. A. Hill Stable, Vito Cucci of Belmar Racing and Breeding, and Mark Pine of Pine Racing Stables—regrouped. Werth headed to Saratoga a week before the Belmont and immersed himself in the sport, spending time at the barn with Dornoch and getting acquainted with the city. 

“It was the first time I’d been to Saratoga,” he says. “We had the greatest time of our lives.”

Certainly, the pleasures of Saratoga Springs factored into that estimation, but winning the Belmont Stakes burnished those memories like pretty much nothing else could. 

Sent off at odds of nearly 18-1, the third highest in the race, Dornoch ran within a half-length of pacesetting Seize the Grey, the horse he’d lost to at Saratoga the summer before. But this time it was Dornoch that hit the wire first, drawing off to win by a half-length and holding off a late-charging Mindframe in a thrilling finish.  

“It was a life-changing moment,” says Werth. “I thought, ‘My God, this sport is incredible.’ We dreamed this incredible dream, and there we were, living it.” 

Werth returned to Saratoga later in the summer, making appearances both on and off the track, including as a celebrity judge for the Permanently Disabled Jockey Fund’s annual Jockey Karaoke fundraiser. (At the event, he was the winning bidder on a restored Belmont Park bench.) While in town, he began developing a plan for introducing the sport and its thrills to a wider audience, and Icon Racing was born. 

Icon Racing is an ownership partnership that Werth envisions as “the cheapest, most transparent” in Thoroughbred racing. Its partners include Shawn Kelley, a Major League pitcher who retired in 2021, and Jeff Berry, a former sports agent who now serves as senior advisor to the president of baseball operations for the San Francisco Giants. 

Kelley also partners with Werth on the Off the Rail podcast, which launched in March and which bills itself as “No fluff. No red tape. Just real talk, real ownership, and the ride of your life.” 

“We’re trying to create something a little bit different,” Werth explains. “I think that the way to grow the sport is through ownership, and I want Icon to give partners an experience unlike anywhere else. This is a tough sport to learn as a new owner; when I got started, half the time I had no idea what people were talking about, and now I can’t get enough of it.” 

Werth envisions an app through which partners can stay up to date on their horses’ training and racing schedules; he’d even like to put cameras in the partnership’s horses’ stalls so that owners can check on them whenever they want. 

Shares in Icon horses start at $100,000, and Werth promises that partners won’t have any management fees. 

After the Saratoga meet ended last year, Werth and Icon headed to one of the country’s premier Thoroughbred auctions, the Keeneland September Yearling Sale in Lexington, KY, and spent more than $1 million on young horses. Those horses won’t make it to the races for at least another year, but Werth’s Two Eight Racing has high hopes for two horses he purchased before Icon was created: Flying Mohawk and Outfielder.

At the magazine’s press time, Flying Mohawk, now 3 years old and with two wins and two second-place finishes under his belt, is gearing up to take Werth back to the Kentucky Derby. He’s a long shot to win, but, hey, so was Dornoch in last year’s Belmont. Two Eight Racing owns the colt in partnership with Berry Family Racing and Kaleta Racing. 

At last summer’s Fasig-Tipton yearling sale in Saratoga, trainer Wesley Ward purchased a yearling colt for Werth. Now named Outfielder and at press time still unraced, the colt cost $850,000. Werth hopes that both Flying Mohawk and Outfielder will run at Saratoga this summer. 

“It’s going to be tough to top my first trip to Saratoga,” says Werth. “We won the Belmont, we ran fourth in the Travers. We had an awesome time with great people in a great city. It’s really quite the place.”

Werth continues: “You never know where you’re going to be in life, but I know that I’m going to be spending a lot of summers in Saratoga Springs.”