In June 2022, the Belmont Stakes offered American racing one of those rare moments in which sport, bloodlines, ambition and human emotion suddenly converged into a single image.
Before more than 46,000 paying spectators at Belmont Park, Mo Donegal, a son of the outstanding sire Uncle Mo, unleashed a powerful late run under Puerto Rican star Irad Ortiz Jr. to capture the 154th running of the Belmont Stakes, the grueling final leg of the American Triple Crown. Just behind him came his stablemate Nest, the brilliant daughter of Curlin, ridden by Irad’s older brother, José Ortiz. For a few unforgettable seconds, the long Belmont stretch belonged entirely to the Ortiz family, as the two brothers crossed the wire first and second for the same ownership and training team before embracing beyond the finish line.
The result instantly became one of the defining images of the 2022 American racing season. Yet the significance of that afternoon extended far beyond the race itself.
For trainer Todd Pletcher and owner Mike Repole, the Belmont victory represented the culmination of years of vision, patience and belief in the modern American Thoroughbred. The symbolism was impossible to overlook: Mo Donegal was himself a son of Uncle Mo, the brilliant juvenile champion campaigned years earlier by Repole Stable before becoming one of the most influential sires in North America. In many ways, the Belmont Stakes became the visible proof that Repole’s racing philosophy had evolved from the ownership of elite racehorses into the construction of a lasting bloodstock legacy.
American racing media immediately recognized the broader meaning of the achievement. Thoroughbred Daily News emphasized the emotional force of the Repole-Pletcher exacta and the extraordinary image created by the Ortiz brothers on one of racing’s grandest stages. What emerged was not simply the story of a Grade I victory, but the portrait of an ownership operation that had become one of the defining forces in contemporary American racing.
It was precisely this deeper dimension that became the focus of a special episode of Mondo Galoppo, hosted by Italian journalist Filippo Brusa together with Paolo Romanelli.
Romanelli occupies a singular place within the Italian and international Thoroughbred world. Widely respected in Italy as one of the country’s leading dermatologists, he is also founder and CEO of Ital-Cal Horse Managementand heir to the historic Regoli racing dynasty, whose roots trace back to Luigi Regoli, assistant trainer to the legendary Federico Tesio during the golden age of Italian racing.
Founded in California in 1984, Ital-Cal Horse Management was created with a clear mission: to build a lasting bridge between European and American Thoroughbred racing. Through bloodstock activity, breeze-up sales, horse management and international partnerships, the company has spent decades connecting Italy and the United States within the global racing industry. Romanelli’s perspective therefore carried a unique authority: he was not observing the Belmont Stakes from afar, but from inside a transatlantic racing culture that has linked Italian and American Thoroughbred traditions for generations.
Throughout the broadcast, the conversation gradually widened from the race itself to the broader meaning of Mike Repole’s rise within American racing. Repole emerged not merely as a successful owner, but as a distinctly American figure: an Italian-American entrepreneur who transformed business success into sporting ambition while remaining deeply connected to the emotional world of Thoroughbred racing.
The episode also explored the atmosphere surrounding the Ocala breeze-up sales in Florida — one of the great international centers of breeding and training — together with Romanelli’s Miami IP project, created to bring American-bred Thoroughbreds to race in Italy. In this way, the program moved naturally between Belmont Park, Ocala and Italy, revealing how modern Thoroughbred racing increasingly exists as an international network of bloodlines, people and cultural exchanges.
More than a simple racing recap, the episode became a meditation on heritage, ambition and the enduring fascination of the Thoroughbred horse. Viewed today through the perspective of Top Derby — an international cultural platform dedicated to the horse — that 2022 broadcast now appears almost prophetic. Because the story of Mike Repole was never only about winning the Belmont Stakes. It was about how passion, memory, vision and racing culture can still shape the imagination of the modern Thoroughbred world.
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