Immortality Doesn’t Find Its Place

Silver Charm lost a horse race Saturday, but you can’t say the gray colt lost the Triple Crown, because he never had it to lose.

“It’s not an award. You have to earn it,” said jockey Gary Stevens. “That’s why there have only been 11 horses that have done it.”

But Stevens wasn’t sure the New York racing public, as it crowded the rail after the Belmont Stakes, would appreciate the nuances of that logic. Stevens had a lump in his stomach from the stretch-run loss to Touch Gold and was expecting to take a few lumps from the crowd as well.

“I’ve had to come back to the crowd here before when I’ve been beaten on the favorite, and I felt bad because I knew there would be booing and my horse didn’t deserve that,” Stevens said.

Stevens was surprised, however - although it wasn’t his biggest surprise of the day - to hear a warm round of applause for the horse that won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, but didn’t quite make the leap into horse racing hyperspace.

“People came for a show and they got it,” said Silver Charm’s trainer, Bob Baffert. “We wanted to pull this off so bad, and I thought we were going to get it done and help bring racing back.”

Silver Charm may not have single-hoovedly revived the sport of thoroughbred racing, but his quest certainly revived attendance for the Belmont Stakes. Just two years ago, barely 37,000 came out. Saturday’s attendance was nearly double that.

Although he didn’t become Tiger Woods in horseshoes, Silver Charm did prove that sports fans thirst for heroes, even if - maybe especially if - those heroes can’t talk.

The thirst is so great that even nearheroes can receive warm applause when they finally fail. That’s not a great comfort to Stevens, Baffert and owners Bob Lewis and Beverly Lewis, who missed out on a $5 million bonus Saturday, but it’s still nice.

Of even less comfort is the realization that history gives horses like Silver Charm the unkindest cut by ignoring them. The 11 Triple Crown winners are inscribed in stone and celebrated each year.

But Silver Charm is the fifth horse to win the Derby and the Preakness since Affirmed was the last Triple Crown winner in 1978. The previous four - Spectacular Bid, Pleasant Colony, Alysheba and Sunday Silence - whether by dint of a bad trip in the Belmont or a fresh horse that caught them or whatever, are relegated to also-ran status despite their accomplishments.

“It’s unfair, and the feeling is crushing,” said Chris McCarron, who won Saturday but was the mount on Alysheba in 1987. “I don’t know how long it takes to get over a loss like that, because I’m not over it yet.”

Stevens went from the euphoria of a sure winner to those depths in the time it took his horse to run 20 yards Saturday.

When Stevens asked Silver Charm to rush for the finish, the horse responded with a burst of acceleration that put away Free House, his stretch rival from the Preakness.

“He made the most explosive move he’s ever made in any race,” Stevens said, “and the inside of me, the feeling flared up - ‘We’re gonna do it!’ “

But it was just about then that Touch Gold became a shadow moving quickly on the far outside of Stevens’ vision. At first, the jockey couldn’t believe it, but then he understood perfectly what that shadow meant.

“I knew 50 yards from the wire we were second-best,” Stevens said. “Your world caves in.”

The talk shows won’t be calling as often. The contract Stevens signed with the William Morris talent agency won’t be quite as lucrative. The lights will dim as surely as warm applause fades on a cool June afternoon.

For most of America, the horse racing season is over now. It will begin again next May, with another set of potential heroes. If one can win three distance races at just the right times, that horse’s name will be spoken forever.

So, Silver Charm didn’t lose the Triple Crown, but he did lose immortality. That makes all of us about even for the day.