Third Leg, Broken Dreams

ELMONT, N.Y. —  Welcome to Heartbreak Alley, home of shattered dreams and fractured bones.

The proper name for this place is Belmont Park. But after what happened here Saturday, and for that matter the last three years, any name that conjures up images of sadness and sadism would be proper.

They made a sports movie called “Field of Dreams.” This is Agony’s Acres.

For the third consecutive year, a horse came here with the chance to win a Triple Crown, the ultimate in the sport of kings. Charismatic was loaded into the gate here Saturday with the Kentucky Derby and Preakness trophies nicely tucked away in the Newport Beach home of owners Bob and Beverly Lewis. The Lewises also had the same situation in 1997 with Silver Charm, as did owner Mike Pegram last year with Real Quiet.

Each time, it seemed so right, so logical. Racing wanted it, could taste it. So did the fans, many of them mostly people who get interested in horse racing only when there is history lurking. The sportswriters come in record numbers and write enough stories to ruin an Oregon forest. ABC is beside itself and record amounts of hair spray are shipped in.

But it’s almost always the same. The horses don’t win. The mile-and-a-half torture chamber disguised as soft sand and gentle turns has its way.

The exhibits:

* Silver Charm, a horse that scratched and clawed to stay ahead when it saw an opponent get in front, didn’t see Touch Gold and lost a race it had nicely tucked away at the eighth pole.

* Real Quiet, the second consecutive Bob Baffert-trained colt to try to win the Triple Crown at Terror Turfway, had it won at the eighth pole and got beaten--actually nipped by a nose--by Victory Gallop.

* And then came Charismatic, the Cinderella from California, the horse that trainer Wayne Lukas said captivated the public because, as a two-time claimer, he was looked upon like a last-round draft pick going to the Super Bowl. But not only did Charismatic, while trying as gamely as Silver Charm and Real Quiet before him, get beaten in the stretch by a horse--Lemon Drop Kid--that had finished so far behind him in the Kentucky Derby that he was already being washed down when that crossed the line, but he stepped wrong sometime late in the race while changing leads and suffered a broken left leg that will end his racing career, but not his life.

Dreaded Downs had won again. It is a park without pity, the root canal of horse racing.

We are so gullible. We see a Triple Crown before us and we are blinded by its glare. Hope turns to expectation, expectation to assumption. Law of averages, right? Third time is the charm, certainly. We are a nation of sports fans in love with the drama, the history, the guy with his arms raised in celebration, with background music from Bette Midler about heroes.

But Hades Heights almost always pulls us up short.

The numbers should be enough for us to figure it out, enough for us to quit letting hope spring eternal.

There have been 124 chances for a Triple Crown champion--the number of times the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont have been run the same year. It has been done 11 times. That’s a percentage of .0887096. Your chances of becoming rich by playing the slots in Las Vegas are better.

It is so easy to be fooled at Horrible Hollow.

The weather was perfect, low 70s with an occasional refreshing gust of wind. A record crowd of 85,818 came to see history, and that’s no small deal around here when you consider that the Mets and Yankees were playing at the same time and the Knicks were at home trying to take the Eastern Conference finals lead against the Pacers on Saturday night. All sorts of pretty people on hand, from Mayor Giuliani to Bill Parcells to Donald Trump. Golfer Gary Player walked from Charismatic’s barn to the paddock with Bob Lewis and then, in the paddock, chatted with artist Leroy Neiman.

“I just had to be here for this historic moment,” Player told Neiman.

Jeff Lukas, son of the trainer and the person who had done the ritual “leg up” for all four of his dad’s Kentucky Derby winners, got the honors for Charismatic’s Triple Crown try.

The crowd was happy, the horse was ready, the day was perfect.

Once, just once, could not this Chamber of Cruelty relent, give in, have a heart?

Tom Durkin, track announcer who made the race call, answered that clearly, as Lemon Drop Kid and Vision And Verse crossed the finish line ahead of third-place Charismatic, who had either just suffered his broken leg or was a step away from doing so:

“The Triple Crown will go unclaimed for the 21st straight year.”

Baffert, perhaps still in shock or denial from the last two years here, had an interesting spin.

“Racing doesn’t need a Triple Crown, just a horse going for one every year,” he said.

Baffert also admitted that maybe it wasn’t the greatest idea to subject his filly, seventh place-finishing Silverbulletday, to the inevitable at Mugging Manors.

“I’m going back over to the barn,” he said, “and tell her I’m sorry. I’ll just put up my right arm and let her take a nice long bite.”

Expect the result to be gangrene, followed by amputation. Remember, this is Belmont Park.