TRIPLE CROWN RATINGS

REMARKS: There was a 25-year gap between Citation’s Triple Crown in 1948 and Secretariat’s in 1973.

Now there’s an 11-year gap, dating to Affirmed in 1978. With Sunday Silence’s eight-length loss to Easy Goer in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, the 1980s can be added to the 1920s, 1950s and 1960s as decades that failed to produce a Triple Crown champion.

After Sunday Silence had won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, it figured that he could win the Belmont. The first two races hadn’t appeared to tire him, and there was only one legitimate challenger in the Belmont.

But that one challenger, Easy Goer, woke up to run another brilliant race in a career punctuated by such performances. Besides preventing Sunday Silence from having a $5-million Triple Crown payday, Easy Goer also ended the California colt’s five-race winning streak, handing him his first loss since he ran second to Houston in the third race of his career, at Hollywood Park last December.

Shug McGaughey trained Easy Goer harder going into the Belmont than he had before second-place finishes in the Derby and the Preakness. McGaughey, sitting in New York and reading all the newspaper raves about Easy Goer before the Triple Crown, probably started believing them and underestimated the opposition at Churchill Downs. The Derby field was about the same in caliber as the horses that Easy Goer had been beating, but they were joined by Sunday Silence, who turned out to be the best California 3-year-old since Affirmed.

Then, believing that it was the mud, and not Sunday Silence, that accounted for Easy Goer’s defeat in the Derby, McGaughey brought his colt to the Preakness with a similar training routine.

“Maybe I was babying this horse too much going into those earlier races,” McGaughey said after the Belmont. “I was pleased that he had such a hard race in the Preakness, even though we didn’t win. And then we had three weeks to wait for the next one.”

Casting the swing vote that put Easy Goer atop the final edition of the ratings, Arlington’s Tommy Trotter said: “Sunday Silence won the first two races, but maybe Easy Goer did have legitimate excuses. It sure looked like it in the Belmont, the way Easy Goer beat the other horse.”

This is the way the panel assessed the three races before they were run:

KENTUCKY DERBY--Easy Goer was listed on top, based on three consecutive wins this year, including a 1:32 2/5 mile in the Gotham at Aqueduct, but Sunday Silence ran back to his 11-length victory in the Santa Anita Derby and won by 2 1/2 lengths.

PREAKNESS--Sunday Silence was moved to the top spot off his Derby win and won by a nose.

BELMONT--Sunday Silence was rated No. 1 again, but when Easy Goer blew past him on the stretch turn, the race was over.

And while there will be a lively debate over which colt belongs at the head of the division, it is equally difficult to pinpoint which horse deserves to be No. 3 in the ratings. It has been an ordinary crop of 3-year-olds except for Easy Goer and Sunday Silence.

Advisory panel for The Times’ Triple Crown Ratings: Lenny Hale, vice president for racing at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga; Frank (Jimmy) Kilroe, vice president for racing at Santa Anita; and Tommy Trotter, racing secretary at Arlington International Racecourse and Gulfstream Park.TRIPLE CROWN RATINGS

Career Horse S 1 2 3 Earnings 1.Easy Goer 12 8 4 0 $1,889,250 2.Sunday Silence 9 6 3 0 2,570,154 3.Awe Inspiring 10 6 0 1 669,572 4.Le Voyageur 7 1 0 1 100,527 5.Hawkster 13 2 1 2 479,090 6.Open Mind 12 10 2 0 1,393,664 7.Rock Point 14 3 2 2 358,284 8.Irish Actor 13 3 3 3 537,445 9.Triple Buck 10 3 0 3 158,008 10.Dansil 15 7 3 1 507,733