Belmont Moment Hardly Charming
Four good strides.
After three races covering almost four miles, after lifting the hopes of an entire sport and carrying them on his back for a whole month, that’s how far Silver Charm was from finishing off the Triple Crown. Four good strides.
“This game gives you the highest highs and the lowest lows,” jockey Gary Stevens said. “We’re taught to stay on an even keel, but after something like this, it’s tough.”
You could almost feel the air go out of thoroughbred racing at about 5:35 p.m. (EDT) Saturday. By then, the anxiety Silver Charm’s connections felt going into the Belmont Stakes and the exhilaration Touch Gold’s connections experienced coming out had merged into a single emotion: acceptance.
“Sure it’s kind of sad,” said Frank Stronach, the Canadian owner of Touch Gold.
“It’s not a great feeling to be the spoiler. Racing does need Triple Crown winners. But competition,” he added, “that’s what this sport is supposed to be about, too.”
In that sense, at least, Touch Gold’s victory was a satisfying one. No horse was more game covering the tiring 1-1/2-mile surface. Touch Gold broke fifth from the post, battled back to take the lead at the clubhouse turn and then dropped back as far back as fourth place in the stretch run.
His struggles did not go unnoticed. Stevens was calm and confident riding Silver Charm, certain that he had more horse underneath him than in either of the first two Triple Crown races. And with the pace neither fast nor especially tiring, he marked time running down the backstretch Saturday sizing up the competition.
That was Silver Charm’s way of doing business, too. The big gray had yet to face a horse he couldn’t beat running eyeball to eyeball, which was the way Stevens chose to ride him once more.
In both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, Silver Charm had to withstand late challenges from Free House and Captain Bodgit. So when Stevens pulled up alongside Free House, took his measure and started to pull away once more with the finish line a hundred yards ahead, “my insides flared up,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘We’re going to do it.”’ But aboard Touch Gold, Chris McCarron was thinking just the opposite.
“That was part of the plan, not to let the horse know we were coming,” said David Hofmans, Touch Gold’s trainer. With about 75 yards to go, Stevens saw a shadow out of the corner of his eye, and his insides flared once more. This time, though, they flared with distress. He expected Crypto Star and realized it was Touch Gold. Worse, he knew Silver Charm wouldn’t know he had competition on his flank until it was too late.
“We were only 10 jumps or so from the wire and by then, it was too late to get going again,” Stevens said. Stevens came into the interview wearing a look of inevitability, but going out he looked like he was in shock. McCarron followed him a few minutes later. He knew that same range of emotions, firsthand. In 1986, he won the Belmont Stakes with Danzig Connection. He lost the next year when Alysheba, going for a Triple Crown himself, was beaten by Bet Twice.
“How long does it take to get over it?” McCarron repeated a question. “I don’t know because I haven’t gotten over it yet.
“The feeling is crushing. I’ve never been more confident with a horse going into a race than I was with Alysheba,” he added. “I thought he was a mortal lock.”
Every day, at tracks all over this country, racing reminds us there is no such thing. Some 30,000 horses are foaled each year, and the trainer of each and every one dreams of winding up in the winner’s circle beneath the twin spires of Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May.
Bob Baffert stood there a month ago, probably afraid to think too far ahead. Then Silver Charm defied the odds once more by getting to the winner’s circle at the Preakness. For a few hypnotizing moments Saturday, Baffert was on his way to the winner’s circle at Belmont. Then his horse came up short.
Four good strides.