If you thought the Belmont Stakes was strictly old money and seersucker suits, think again. This year, the iconic Triple Crown race is getting a serious culture injection, courtesy of some of the biggest names in music and a mobile app that is making racehorse ownership accessible to, well, anyone.
Run Fast Racing, the brainchild of entertainment executive Adam Kluger, is bringing a celebrity-powered stable to the 2026 Belmont Stakes on June 6, with their horse Vitruvian Man set to compete in what marks a genuine first: a celebrity-owned horse running in a Triple Crown race. Among the owners? Lil Wayne, Rauw Alejandro, Lil Yachty, and entrepreneur Glenn Sorgenstein. Yes, really.
Kluger, a veteran of the music industry who formerly managed Lil Yachty, has spent the last three years quietly building something he believes will reshape American horse racing entirely. “We are going to save the sport,” he has said, with the kind of conviction that makes you think he might actually do it.
The celebrity connections came naturally. Yachty, whom Kluger describes as one of the most business-minded artists he has ever worked with, was an early and enthusiastic partner. Rauw Alejandro grew up around the racetrack with his grandfather in Puerto Rico, so the sport was already in his blood. And Lil Wayne, a lifelong sports fanatic, was simply a great fit. “Everyone involved has a passion for the sport,” Kluger says, “and believes that we can revitalize it by introducing it to a younger generation.”
Trained by the acclaimed Doug O’Neill, the stable has hit the ground running, finishing in the money in six of their first eleven starts. Vitruvian Man is the one to watch at Belmont: a closer who, in Kluger’s words, “could absolutely shock the world if he gets a fast pace in front of him.”
Here’s where it gets interesting for the rest of us. Run Fast Racing is not just a celebrity vanity project. It is a functioning mobile platform that lets anyone buy into the ownership experience for $100 a month. Subscribers co-own a rotating stable of 15 or more racehorses and get a say in real decisions: which jockeys ride, which races to enter, even what the horses are named.
The perks go well beyond the app. Members get free access to the owners box on race weekends, typically with open bar and food included. When a horse wins, prize money is distributed directly to co-owners’ bank accounts through a feature called DirectPay. And with Belmont weekend on the horizon, the stakes are especially high: Run Fast Racing has put up $200,000 in payouts for members if Vitruvian Man crosses the finish line first.
“It’s a real experience,” Kluger says, and he means it literally. Members are at the track, in the box, every single weekend.
What makes Run Fast Racing feel different from other celebrity-backed sports ventures is the intentionality behind it. Kluger is not trying to slap famous names on a press release. His longer vision is to do for horse racing what Formula 1 did for itself over the last decade: transform a niche, gatekept sport into a global cultural phenomenon with a passionate, diverse fanbase.
The Belmont Stakes, now in its third and final year at Saratoga, is the perfect stage for that debut. With Vitruvian Man in the gate on June 6, Run Fast Racing is not just entering a race. It is making a statement about who horse racing belongs to.
And if the app has anything to say about it, the answer is everyone.
