Tragedy Overshadows Glory at Breeders’ Cup : Horse racing: Top filly Go For Wand is destroyed after injury in the stretch of Distaff. Mr. Nickerson dies during Sprint.

About 100 yards from the finish line at Belmont Park, roughly halfway between the horseshoe-shaped hedges that mark the grave sites of Ruffian and Timely Writer, racing lost another of its best Saturday. Go For Wand, said by many to be the next Ruffian, followed that great filly to a death in the call of duty.

Timely Writer was destroyed after breaking down at the top of the stretch in the 1982 Jockey Club Gold Cup. In 1975, an undefeated Ruffian broke down on the Belmont backstretch and never survived all-night surgery, the victim of a match race with Foolish Pleasure, the Kentucky Derby winner. Saturday’s $1-million Breeders’ Cup Distaff, a seven-horse race, also turned into a match race. Go For Wand and Bayakoa, the former trying to win horse of the year and the other trying to win the stake for the second year in a row, went eye to eye through the 1,097-foot stretch.

Less than a sixteenth of a mile from the finish, Go For Wand’s right foreleg gave way, breaking at the ankle. The filly fell, horrifying the crowd of 51,236 and sending her jockey, Randy Romero, over the top.

Bayakoa went on to victory, 6 3/4 lengths ahead of runner-up Colonial Waters, but few were joyous: Not Frank Whitham, theowner of Bayakoa; not Ron McAnally, Bayakoa’s trainer; and not even the many bettors who cashed tickets on the 6-year-old Argentine-bred mare.

Go For Wand spent the first of her final few minutes under the inside fence, where she had rolled with her legs pointed upward. Romero was thrown clear and would ride later in the day.

Go For Wand struggled to her feet and wobbled diagonally across the track, instinctly moving in the direction of the finish line. She stopped in front of the outside fence. Before Bayakoa could be pulled up by Laffit Pincay and returned to the winner’s circle, the track’s horse van was parked in front of helpless Go For Wand.

The large screen that is used when a horse is being destroyed was erected to shield the sight from the crowd. The lethal injection works in seconds. “She suffered a major breakdown in her right front ankle,” said Neil Cleary, a Belmont veterinarian. “She ruptured ligaments in her ankle and suspensory (ligament) apparatus.”

The afternoon will be most vividly remembered for the deaths of Go For Wand and Mr. Nickerson, a horse who apparently suffered a heart attack in the Sprint, the first race of the day. But, for the record, the other winners were Unbridled in the Classic; the European runners In The Wings and Royal Academy in the grass races; Fly So Free and Meadow Star in the juvenile stakes and Safely Kept in the Sprint.

In her box seat, Jane du Pont Lunger, 76, who owns Go For Wand, turned away in shock at the sight of possible joy melting into disaster, her family in tears around her. Lunger, a superstitious woman, had not worn her lucky mud-caked shoes from Saratoga, the first time in four of Go For Wand’s races she was without them.

After Go For Wand had breathed her last, trainer Billy Badgett and his wife of less than a month--Rose Badgett has been the filly’s exercise rider--left the track, Badgett stone-faced and his wife in tears. At the gate leading to the barn area, Badgett asked a security guard, a longtime softball-playing friend, to keep reporters away.

“You can understand,” the guard said. “Billy quit playing softball to start training. He said the horse was the fittest horse he had ever had in his life. He said he couldn’t believe it.”

An hour later, at Go For Wand’s barn, Badgett’s father told reporters that his son had left.

“She warmed up good and didn’t take any bad steps,” Romero said. “She’s always been as sound as a dollar. But then she just snapped her leg off. I had a lot of horse left and I was going to win. It’s too bad, because this was a super filly.”

In the Sprint, Shaker Knit, near the rear of the field and trailing Mr. Nickerson as they moved into the far turn, also fell and suffered a spinal-cord injury. “We will have to make a decision,” said Steve DiMauro, Shaker Knit’s trainer. “He is in shock and has lost his sense of balance.”

Mr. Nickerson’s jockey, Chris Antley, suffered a broken right collarbone and was hospitalized.

Mr. Nickerson’s apparent heart attack could have happened to any horse at any track, but the breakdown of Go For Wand is another symptom in a season-long pattern at Belmont. At least six horses have broken down at the track in the last two weeks; Criminal Type, the Wayne Lukas-trained horse-of-the-year candidate, suffered a career-ending ankle injury in the Jockey Club Gold Cup; and early last week Hey Hey Paula, a promising Lukas filly, had to be destroyed after breaking down during morning training. Gorgeous, who would have been the third betting choice in the Distaff, suffered a chipped bone in a knee during a morning gallop Friday and has been retired.

“These are statistical abnormalities,” said Gerry McKeon, the track president. “We have had different injuries in different parts of the track. These kind of things even out over the course of a year.”

Early Saturday, Lukas scratched Deposit Ticket, part of his two-horse entry in the Juvenile, because of a shin injury.

“The horse is about 80%, and you should be 100% for races like this,” Lukas said before Go For Wand went down. “Not only that, I don’t want to take a chance with this valuable of a horse on a track where so many things are happening.”

After the Distaff, Lukas was more emphatic and said: “They need a serious review. The whole world is watching, and this isn’t what racing is supposed to be. There’s something wrong out there.”

McAnally said that some of the breakdowns involved cheap horses who might not be as sound as stakes runners.

“Belmont’s always been a safe track,” McAnally said. “Accidents happen everywhere. Look at Golden Pheasant, (trainer) Charlie Whittingham’s horse. He got hurt at Santa Anita and couldn’t run in the Breeders’ Cup. I don’t think you can blame the (Belmont) track. They’re doing the best they can.”

Pat Day, who rode Unbridled to victory, didn’t think the track was dangerous.

“It was cuppy early in the day, and then they added some water and tightened it up,” Day said. “No matter how long you’re in racing, you never get used to seeing what happened to Go For Wand. My heart goes out to the people connected with Go for Wand and Mr. Nickerson.”

Sitting beside Day, Carl Nafzger, Unbridled’s trainer, said: “There wasn’t a person in the grandstand who didn’t want to cry.”

* OTHER RACES: Favored two-year-olds Meadow Star and Fly So Free prove to be as tough as billed in winning the juvenile races. C16.

* NOTEBOOK: Jose Santos walks away from disaster in the opening sprint to win two million-dollar races. C17.