Grade I Winners Meet in Belmont Sprint

Grade I winners The Big Beast and Private Zone will face off in the $400,000 Belmont Sprint Championship Stakes (gr. III) July 4 at Belmont Park.

Good Friends Stable's Private Zone, trained by Jorge Navarro, has three grade I scores on his résumé: the 2013 and 2014 Vosburgh Stakes at Belmont, and the 2014 Cigar Mile Handicap at Aqueduct Racetrack. This year the 6-year-old Macho Uno   gelding has a victory in the Churchill Downs Stakes (gr. II) sandwiched between a second in the Gulfstream Park Handicap (gr. II) and a third in the Metropolitan Handicap (gr. I).

Alex and JoAnn Lieblong's The Big Beast won the Ketel One King's Bishop Stakes (gr. I) at Saratoga Race Course last August and was victorious in a six-furlong allowance in his 4-year-old debut at Oaklawn Park in March, but the colt lacked a late kick in the Carter Handicap (gr. I) at Aqueduct, in which he finished fourth April 4. Returning rival Green Gratto was second in the Carter, a length in front of The Big Beast, but has yet to attain a graded victory.

Both grade I winners will carry the highweight of 124 pounds.

Three-time grade III winner Clearly Now, who won last year's Belmont Sprint Championship; grade III winner C. Zee; graded stakes-placed Bay of Plenty and Stallwalkin' Dude; and stakes winner Moonlight Song complete the field for the seven-furlong dirt test.