Summer Squall Reigns Supreme : Preakness: He defeats Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled by 2 1/4 lengths. Mister Frisky finishes far back in third.

A year ago, Pat Day was on the fence, aboard Easy Goer and pinned in tight by Sunday Silence and Pat Valenzuela in the Preakness. Easy Goer and Day reached the wire a nose short of their more aggressive opponents, and it was a hollow consolation to be second best in one of the most thrilling races ever.

Saturday, in the 115th Preakness, Day had the rail again, but this time he also had the horse.

Summer Squall, the same little colt who came up empty in the stretch of the Kentucky Derby two weeks ago, won by 2 1/4 lengths, ending the Triple Crown bid of Unbridled in a reversal of the way they finished at Churchill Downs.

In last year’s Preakness, Day’s problem persisted through Pimlico’s stretch. This time, crunch time lasted only a second or two, when Summer Squall needed room to go inside at the head of the stretch. Fighting Notion, who had led from the start under Alberto Delgado, came off the fence, enabling Summer Squall to slip through.

On Summer Squall’s right at the time, gathering steam as he had in the stretch run of the Derby, was Unbridled and his jockey, Craig Perret, who would have been able to keep Summer Squall behind Fighting Notion if Day attempted to swing to the outside.

Both Perret and Carl Nafzger, the Derby winner’s trainer, said that the Preakness turned on this point.

“If Pat doesn’t get through (on the rail), he would have had to check before he came around (Unbridled),” Nafzger said. “I don’t think he would have gotten (the victory). If Pat doesn’t get through, then it’s a good horse race. He beats us a nose, or we beat him a neck, something like that.”

Perret was astonished that Delgado, the champion apprentice in 1982 who was riding in his first Preakness, allowed Summer Squall and Day to get by.

“You would think,” Perret said, “that riders riding for this kind of money would not give an inch. We’re pros, and we want to ride safely, but the reason we’re here is to win the horse race. I had Pat in a good spot if he doesn’t get through. But he showed a lot of patience, and waited for the hole to open.”

Fighting Notion, sent off at 35-1 by the crowd of 86,531, finished fifth in the nine-horse field.

“I saw Pat inside me,” Delgado said. “I had closed the fence (on Day) once. But then my horse came out a little at that point. My horse was tired, and there was no sense stopping Pat and costing him the race.”

Some jockeys would have deposited Summer Squall and Day in the infield and then gone on about the business of finishing fifth.

“That was a fortunate break we had in the stretch when the hole opened,” Day said. “This time my horse stayed in the game and kept his concentration, not like he’d done in the Derby. He finished the way he was capable of finishing and was not at the bottom of the barrel at the end.

“If the other horse keeps the fence, then Craig keeps me locked in and I have to wait until he gets out of there.”

With a Triple Crown sweep no longer a possibility, the only extra money available in the series is a $1-million bonus that goes to the horse that runs in all three races and totals the most points on a 5-3-1 basis for finishing first, second and third.

Summer Squall and Unbridled are tied with eight points apiece, but Summer Squall will not run in the Belmont Stakes, the final leg of the series, June 9. Cot Campbell, head of the 28-member syndicate that owns Summer Squall, repeated Saturday that the colt would skip the Belmont because New York prohibits the use of Lasix, which Summer Squall is given to prevent respiratory bleeding.

“That decision is etched in stone,” Campbell said.

Unbridled, the 17-10 Preakness favorite, finished nine lengths ahead of Mister Frisky, who saved third by a half-length over Music Prospector, a 61-1 shot who had trouble most of the way. The others, in order, were Fighting Notion, Land Rush, Kentucky Jazz, Baron de Vaux and J.R.’s Horizon.

Summer Squall, earning $445,900 of the $686,000 purse--both Preakness records--was barely the second choice over Mister Frisky in the betting and paid $6.80, $3 and $2.60. The other payoffs were $3 and $2.80 on Unbridled and $3.40 for Mister Frisky.

After a slow early pace, the time for 1 3/16 miles was 1:53 3/5, one-fifth of a second slower than the Preakness record and three-fifths of a second off the track record that Criminal Type set in winning the Pimlico Special a week ago. Summer Squall ran the last three-sixteenths of a mile in 18 seconds, the fastest finishing time since Pleasant Colony won the race in 1981.

Gary Stevens, who won the Santa Anita Derby aboard Mister Frisky for the Puerto Rican import’s 16th consecutive victory, was unable to explain the colt’s defeats in the Derby and Preakness. Saturday, Mister Frisky was within a length or two of Fighting Notion, whose early fractions--23 1/5 seconds for a quarter-mile and 47 seconds for the half mile--were especially slow for a track that had been producing fast times. From the quarter pole to the wire, Mister Frisky had nothing left.

“The first two (Summer Squall and Unbridled) ran by me like my horse was tied down,” Stevens said. “The last two starts have not been up to par, but why, I don’t know. At the five-sixteenths pole, I asked my horse to run pretty good, and after two or three strides, he didn’t pick it up like I anticipated.”

Laz Barrera took the blame for Mister Frisky’s early position, saying that his instructions to Stevens were too rigid.

“I told Gary to lay second behind the speed,” Barrera said. “But that was only cheap speed. Gary did what I told him, but we should have gone to the lead because the pace was so slow. The horse was fighting him early.”

In other words, the fast pace in the Derby hurt Mister Frisky because he was too close, and the slow pace was his undoing in the Preakness because he wasn’t close enough.

Summer Squall was fourth going down the backstretch, behind Fighting Notion, Mister Frisky and Kentucky Jazz. Unbridled was ahead of only one horse, about eighth lengths off the lead.

Perret moved with Unbridled on the outside about the time Day was gunning Summer Squall along the fence. When the hole opened for Summer Squall at the top of the stretch, Unbridled appeared to nose ahead of him for a moment.

Day had no qualms about taking Summer Squall through the gap. “Easy Goer is the best horse I’ve ever ridden, and this horse is the most courageous,” Day said. “He showed me that in the Hopeful last year at Saratoga, when he got knocked around in the stretch and still won. He likes the competition, he even relishes it. Today he wanted it, and he was hunting for it.”

Summer Squall, who had bled twice before in the morning, during a workout at Gulfstream Park in February and after a gallop at Keeneland last month, caused a stir Friday when blood trickled from his nostrils for about four or five minutes after a 1 1/2-mile gallop. Before the Preakness, Summer Squall was treated with Lasix.

“I know this is hard to believe,” Campbell said, “but we know the horse, and his bleeding on Friday didn’t worry us. What worried us more is that some reporters saw the bleeding, and then we had to answer all the questions about it.

“It would be irresponsible to run the horse in three weeks (in the Belmont) with no Lasix, going a mile and a half.”

Unbridled races on Lasix, too, but Nafzger said that the horse can run one race without it. Running without Summer Squall can’t hurt, either.