Post time for the 155th Belmont Stakes is scheduled for 6:02 p.m. CDT Saturday. That’s when nine horses are supposed to break from the gate at Belmont Park in Elmont, New York, in the final Triple Crown event of the thoroughbred-racing season

For a little while this week, there was some doubt if the horses would get to the post on Saturday.

Belmont Park canceled racing on Thursday because of poor air quality caused by the smoke from Canadian wildfires, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said there would have to be improvement for racing to return. But horses did return to the track at Belmont Park on Friday with 11 races, including five graded-stakes events.

At 1.5 miles (or 12 furlongs), the Belmont Stakes is 0.25 miles (or 2 furlongs) longer than the Kentucky Derby. It’s 2.5 furlongs longer than the Preakness Stakes. The extra distance and its position as the final of the Triple Crown events is why Saturday’s race is called “The Test of the Champion.”

The Belmont won’t be the final test for a Triple Crown candidate this season. Mage, the Kentucky Derby winner, isn’t in the Belmont Stakes field after finishing third in the Preakness Stakes.

National Treasure won the Preakness on May 20 and is entered in the Belmont Stakes. But Forte was established as the morning-line favorite at 5-2 at the post-position draw on Tuesday, and the colt carried the same line in the early betting on Saturday.

Forte had been the favorite to win the Kentucky Derby, but the colt missed the race after being scratched on the morning of the Run for the Roses on May 6 because of an injury.

Secretariat still holds the 1.5-mile Belmont record of 2:24.0, set when the colt won the 1973 race by 31 lengths and became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years. Secretariat’s time is 2 seconds faster than the second-best time in the Belmont, turned in by Easy Goer in 1989.

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Mo Donegal won last year’s Belmont Stakes in a time of 2:28.28.

FOX will televise the Belmont Stakes, starting coverage at 3 p.m. Saturday. FS1 will televise live from Belmont Park between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday.

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The post positions and morning-line odds for the 2023 Belmont Stakes include:

1. Tapit Shoes 20-1

2. Tapit Trice 3-1

3. Arcangelo 8-1

4. National Treasure 5-1

5. Il Miracolo 30-1

6. Forte 5-2

7. Hit Show 10-1

8. Angel of Empire 7-2

9. Red Route One 15-1

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.