This year’s Triple Crown season is littered with chaos, errors, and accidents. Big horses have fallen by the wayside, no names have hogged the glory. All I really want from Saturday’s Belmont Stakes is a clean race.

The iconic news clips of the first two legs are not pretty. First, 50-1 long shot Giacomo gets the hide ridden off of him by jockey Mike Smith and wins the Kentucky Derby (insert incredible blimp footage of Smith weaving through traffic as if driving a hot-rod Mini Cooper up the freeway). Second, Scrappy T leads the Preakness coming into the final turn when jockey Ramon Dominguez winds up like he’s a cartoon boxer and smacks him hard on left side. Scrappy T lunges out and into Afleet Alex’s line. They clip heels. The crowd gasps. Alex is on his knees. Jockey Jeremy Rose clings for dear life. Triumphantly, they rise, shooting ahead to victory.

Both moments made for great television. People who don’t usually watch horse racing easily grasped the drama. But these were not great races.

Afleet Alex’s move in the Preakness would have been more impressive had he not fallen; running into another horse is not what the game is about. Good racing is Alex charging out of the turn, moving boldly, and winning the Preakness by 10 lengths. Giacomo’s Derby victory would have been more credible had he not blazed by horses stopped dead in their tracks, exhausted by foolishly tearing through the beginning of the race. Good racing involves a controlled opening pace and the best horses closing on the stretch.

Some of my colleagues are selling the Belmont as a rubber match between Giacomo and Afleet Alex. But this is hardly Alydar and Affirmed neck and neck – this is the result of a comedy of errors.

Nonetheless, the bunting is hung, the flowers are in their pots, the mile markers and finish-line poles have been polished. NBC crews are out at Belmont already, spending half their time playing with spotlights and cameras, and the other half lounging around in the June sun, talking about the big race.

On paper, Afleet Alex looks unbeatable. The rest of these horses are stunningly overmatched, and even the contenders – Giacomo, Southern Africa, Reverberate – look good only by comparison to the rest of the field.

Not only does Alex deserve the victory, he deserves to be 3-year-old of the year. He has factored in every race he has run except for the March 19 Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park, when he was sick. He runs consistently and with strength. By all rights, he should win the Belmont by 10 lengths the biggest day on the New York racing calendar.

But why would this Triple Crown series begin to make sense all of a sudden? Why would we expect order from a 3-year-old season littered with absurdity and flukes?

With all the early-season horses sidelined by injury or initial overestimation, the Belmont Stakes gate is filled with horses we might see on any given Saturday. These are not seasoned, predictable runners gunning for a prize to which they have been pointed all year; these are horses entered with a shrug. Thus the likelihood of more chaos.

Alex could also be derailed by the infamous 1 1/2-mile distance that has derailed so many favorites, including last year’s Triple Crown hopeful, Smarty Jones. Alex’s trainer, Tim Ritchey, was asked last week how he thought Rose would handle the 1 1/2-mile ride in the Belmont, especially in light of Stewart Elliot’s early move that some say cost Smarty the 2004 Belmont.

“Jeremy will just have to judge where he is and sit back with him,” Ritchey said. “I still think he needs to make a good three-eighths of a mile run. […] That’s the kind of race I would like to see him run, just a stalking race, sit back and make one good three-eighths of a mile run.”

Therein lies the problem. Afleet Alex is the horse to beat, and not just on the tote board. Every jockey in the race has one thing on his mind: How do I beat Afleet Alex? The best way is to move early.

In all likelihood, Pinpoint and A.P. Arrow will go for the lead out of the inside slots. They will set a mild pace while being stalked by Reverberate. Alex will start out calmly, running in the back of the pack with Giacomo.

The key here is how slow a pace the front-runners set. If Pinpoint and A.P. Arrow do indeed take the lead, it could be very sluggish. In A.P. Arrow’s last victory, he set a 47.8-second pace for the half; Pinpoint ran a 49-second fraction during his victory in the Sir Barton last out. Compare that with the Derby, which kicked off at a fiery 45.2.

Off that kind of slow pace, any number of horses could start gunning for it with a half-mile or more to go. Southern Africa, Giacomo, Indy Storm, and Andromeda’s Hero all want to close, and their jockeys would be insane to wait for Alex to move first. And Rose will get pulled in with them.

In that case – call it the anti-Alex scenario – Reverberate will find himself in a nice spot, and he’ll sit tight and take the place money. Afleet Alex and Giacomo will get their rematch, but it’ll be for third, and they’ll be battling Andromeda’s Hero there as well. Alex will take the show, and the glory will be left to a long shot – say, Indy Storm – who managed not to burn out but simply tucked in, avoided traffic, and was there at the wire when it came time to kick home.

While not necessarily good horse racing in the classic sense, it will make for excellent entertainment.

Mr. Watman’s “Race Day” is forthcoming from Ivan R. Dee. He can be reached at mwatman@nysun.com.