In the Preakness, Sunday Silence Nose Best : Whittingham’s Colt Edges Easy Goer to Win His Second Jewel

Sunday Silence has seldom had an easy go of things.

The blackish colt had a near-fatal stomachache as a yearling. He survived a harrowing cross-country van ride the next year, after his owner twice unsuccessfully tried to unload him at horse auctions.

In this year’s Kentucky Derby, Easy Goer was supposed to have the talent to win easily. Sunday Silence finished 2 1/2 lengths ahead of him to win, but still had a lot to prove when he went to the starting gate Saturday in the Preakness.

In the week before the Preakness, reporters covering the race seemed more concerned than trainer Charlie Whittingham about Sunday Silence’s bruised right front hoof. Whittingham said that the injury had been treated in time, but hardly anybody believed him. Sunday Silence lost two days of training, and even other trainers did not give Whittingham, 76, much of a chance of pulling off another victory.

For eight minutes Saturday, between the time Sunday Silence got his nose to the finish line ahead of Easy Goer’s and the time when the stewards made the 114th Preakness official, all of the Derby winner’s problems were flashing through Arthur Hancock’s mind. Hancock, who couldn’t get more than a $32,000 offer for Sunday Silence at the two auctions, is a 50% owner of the colt, with Whittingham and Ernest Gaillard, a retired La Jolla surgeon, owning the rest.

Pat Day, who was riding Easy Goer, had claimed foul against Sunday Silence and Pat Valenzuela, after a stretch battle reminiscent of Affirmed’s victory over Alydar, Easy Goer’s sire, in the Preakness 11 years ago.

“Here we go again,” Hancock said to himself while Pimlico’s three stewards interviewed Day and Valenzuela on the telephone and reviewed head-on videotape shots of the stretch duel. Hancock thought that his and Sunday Silence’s incredible streak of beating the odds might be over.

But the stewards rejected Day’s claims that he was brushed and crowded in the stretch, and allowed Sunday Silence’s victory by a nose to stand. Now Whittingham’s lightly regarded colt--he went off at 2-1 Saturday while Easy Goer was again odds-on at 3-5--is one victory away from the Triple Crown. If Sunday Silence can win the Belmont Stakes in New York June 10, he will become the 12th Triple Crown champion and the first since Affirmed barely finished ahead of Alydar in all three races in 1978.

As expected, the Preakness was a two-horse race, despite the presence of six other starters. It will be considered one of the most thrilling races ever. A crowd of 90,145, the biggest in Pimlico history, watched Easy Goer, on the rail, and Sunday Silence, right alongside, grudgingly match strides through the 1,152-foot stretch.

The six 3-year-olds behind them were mere bystanders. Rock Point was five lengths back in third. Dansil was two more lengths back in fourth. The rest of the order of finish was Hawkster, Houston, Pulverizing and Northern Wolf, with Awe Inspiring, Easy Goer’s stablemate and trainer Shug McGaughey’s insurance in case of rain, being scratched as expected.

Sunday Silence ran one of the slowest times in Kentucky Derby history, but considering the Preakness, that dawdling can be attributed to the mud at Churchill Downs and the winner zig-zagging to the wire. The 1 3/16-mile Preakness was run in 1:53 4/5, third fastest in history.

A second foul was claimed after the race, Larry Snyder, Dansil’s jockey, contending that Rock Point and Chris Antley interfered with them at the head of the stretch. That claim also was disallowed.

Of the $674,200 purse, $438,230 belonged to Sunday Silence, who paid $6.20, $3 and $3.20. The other payoffs were $2.40 and $2.40 for Easy Goer and $3.60 for Rock Point. A $2 exacta on Sunday Silence and Easy Goer was worth $10.40.

When Day was pulling up Easy Goer on the backstretch after the race, Valenzuela heard him ask an outrider to tell the stewards that there would be a foul claim.

“I can’t believe you,” Day said Valenzuela told him.

Day said that coming off the stretch turn, Sunday Silence bumped Easy Goer and tried to crowd him into the fence. The horses brushed at least twice after the bump at the top of the stretch.

“I don’t get on the phone (to the stewards) just to talk,” Day said. “I only do it if I think I really have a beef. If I had been beaten by a half-length or three-quarters of a length, it wouldn’t have made any difference about what happened.

“I think what happened had a bearing on the outcome. But they have good stewards here, and I’ll abide by their decision.”

The horses were so close that the jockeys had no choice about which whip hand they used. Day was whipping left-handed and Valenzuela, inside the eighth pole, switched his whip to the right side.

A winner of a Triple Crown race has never been disqualified on an objection.

“There was no grounds for disqualification,” Pimlico steward Clinton Pitts said Saturday. “They rode close, but it was good, clean race riding.”

The head-on angle showed that Sunday Silence ran in a straight line, and Easy Goer actually had more room down on the fence in the final sixteenth than he had earlier.

In the final analysis, Valenzuela outrode Day. He was on the outside coming down the stretch, the best place to be in a two-horse drive. And Day cocked Easy Goer’s head in Sunday Silence’s direction through the final yards, a tactic that seemed to serve no purpose.

Day second-guessed himself later. “You know what they say about hindsight, it’s 20-20,” Day said. “I let my horse make what might have been a premature move when we made the lead (at the end of the backstretch), and that might have taken something away from him that he would have needed in the last 40 yards. But any time you run second, you’re going to get criticized. You’re the guy who’s going to get all the heat.”

Neither Sunday Silence nor Easy Goer had an easy race. Easy Goer broke in the air and Sunday Silence was bumped by Northern Wolf leaving the gate and again by Pulverizing in the first turn.

Houston and his new jockey, Angel Cordero, made the lead by the time they had run a half-mile, and that colt’s 1:09 3/5 clocking for the first six furlongs was too fast of a pace.

Sunday Silence raced in third place down the backside, with Houston and Northern Wolf ahead of him. Easy Goer was close behind, in fifth, and only about five lengths off the lead.

Easy Goer passed Houston and Sunday Silence going into the far turn, with Northern Wolf dropping out of contention. Easy Goer pushed Sunday Silence into almost running up Houston’s heels.

“He stopped us a little,” Valenzuela said, “but I had plenty of horse and I just moved up outside him.”

Heading into the stretch, Sunday Silence took dead aim at Easy Goer and Day had the choice of going wide or dropping down on the inside. Ron McAnally, Hawkster’s trainer, thought that this was where the race was decided. “If I don’t go inside, I have to go extremely wide,” Day said. “When I went by Houston, I thought I was in a prime spot. But Sunday Silence is a courageous horse. He’s a fighter.”

Nobody knows that better than Hancock, the Paris, Ky., breeder. An hour after the Preakness, Hancock stood next to Sunday Silence’s barn as the Preakness winner was being cooled off.

“That’s all horse,” Hancock said, nodding toward the Halo-Wishing Well colt. “He’s a fighter. Maybe it’s true about the patchwork of destiny. Maybe the Big Man upstairs has a plan for Charlie Whittingham to win the Triple Crown.”

Horse Racing Notes

Trainer Shug McGaughey said that he was surprised that Pat Day made an early move for the lead with Easy Goer. “Pat told me that the colt was so full of run that he didn’t have much choice,” McGaughey said. “Just when it looked like the thing might be over with, there came Sunday Silence. We over-estimated him.” . . . Regarding the foul claim, McGaughey said: “When the race is that close, you’ve got to take a shot. But I would not have liked to win the race on a disqualification, because that wouldn’t prove anything. It was tight down there on the fence. But I guess it wasn’t crowded enough.”

The field for the Belmont is expected to be small. Besides Sunday Silence and Easy Goer, other probables are Rock Point; Fire Maker, who won the Withers; and Awe Inspiring, Easy Goer’s stablemate who is scheduled to run in the Jersey Derby a week from Monday at Garden State Park. . . . Easy Goer is in a position to duplicate the dubious record set by his sire, Alydar, the only horse to run second in all three Triple Crown races. . . . Bill Shoemaker, who didn’t have a mount in the Preakness, made the correct call on the race before the stewards did. Watching the televised rerun in the jockeys’ room, Shoemaker said: “They won’t take the winner down.”

Sunday Silence has won six of eight starts, with two seconds, and has earned $1.4 million. He can earn a $5-million bonus that goes with the Triple Crown sweep. . . . Penny Chenery, who raced Secretariat in his Triple Crown year in 1973, saw the Preakness and said afterward that she thought Sunday Silence would duplicate the feat. . . . Winning Colors, last year’s Kentucky Derby winner who has been winless ever since, underwent surgery at Belmont Park Saturday to correct a partial paralysis of the throat. Trainer Wayne Lukas, who saddled Houston in the Preakness, said that there wouldn’t be any word on the 4-year-old filly’s future for 60 days. . . . Kent Desormeaux, the country’s leading rider based on wins this year, won five races at Pimlico Saturday, but didn’t have a mount in the Preakness. . . . King’s Nest won Saturday’s $150,000 Maryland Budweiser Breeders’ Cup at Pimlico by 1 1/4 lengths over Silano. Play the King, who finished fifth, broke down past the wire and had to be destroyed.

PREAKNESS CHART Copyright, Daily Racing Form

Scratched--Awe Inspring.

3 8--SUNDAY SILENCE 6.20: 3.00: 3.20 2 2--EASY GOER 2.40: 2.40 1 5--ROCK POINT 3.60 Time--23 2/5, :46 2/5, 1:09 3/5, 1:34 1/5, 1:53 4/5. Start good. Won driving. Winner--dk.b. or br.c. by Halo--Wishing Well by Understanding. Trained by Charlie Whittingham. Bred by Oak Cliff Thoroughbred Ltd (Ky.). Mutuel pool--$1,491,333.

$2 EXACTA (8-2) PAID $10.40 $3 TRIPLE (8-2-5) PAID $66.00 SUNDAY SILENCE, bumped by NORTHERN WOLF after the start, was bumped lightly again by PULVERIZING racing into the first turn, then remained close up while well out in the track into the backstretch. He was steadied when EASY GOER moved by him nearing the end of the backstretch, then caught that rival with a rush approaching the stretch. SUNDAY SILENCE held a narrow advantage into the stretch while under lefthanded urging, then outgamed that rival while brushing repeatedly with him after his rider switched his whip to the right hand inside the final furlong.

EASY GOER quickly reached a striking position after breaking in the air and eased to the outside of horses at the first turn. He moved boldly from the outside to catch HOUSTON racing into the far turn, but was replaced by SUNDAY SILENCE while dropping to the inside nearing the stretch. EASY GOER came again under lefthanded uring to gain a brief lead approaching the final sixteenth and narrowly missed while brushing with the winner. A foul claim against SUNDAY SILENCE by the rider of EASY GOER, for alleged interference through the stretch, was not allowed.

ROCK POINT, unhurried early, made a run from the outside approaching the stretch, remained within easy striking distance to the final furlong but lacked a rally while lugging in during the drive and brushing with DANSIL. DANSIL, reserved while saving ground into the backstretch, eased out while moving on the far turn, then was brushed by ROCK POINT while weakening under pressure. A foul claim against ROCK POINT by the rider of DANSIL, for alleged interference after entering the stretch, was not allowed.

HAWKSTER, outrun to the far turn, raced wide into the stretch and passed only tired horses while being carried out slightly by HOUSTON. HOUSTON, prominent from the outset, sprinted clear while racing slightly out from the rail into the backstretch, was steadied along the inside after being replaced by EASY GOER before reaching the stretch, then bore out while tiring.

PULVERIZING, away alertly, was steadied along behind the leaders racing into the first turn, eased out bumping SUNDAY SILENCE lightly and was finished soon after entering the backstretch. NORTHERN WOLF came over after the start bumping SUNDAY SILENCE, raced outside HOUSTON while showing speed into the backstretch and stopped badly.