ANALYSIS : Day After Tragedy, the Debate Continues

Another horse broke down during training hours at Belmont Park Sunday morning. As thoroughbreds go, it was simply another horse. But Sunday’s breakdown was another addition to a lengthening list of injured horses here, a list that includes Go For Wand, Criminal Type, Gorgeous, Deposit Ticket and Garden Gal, all of whom couldn’t win a Breeders’ Cup race because of mishaps.

All of the injured horses missed the Breeders’ Cup except Go For Wand, who is dead because she raced. In the aftermath of the death of the nation’s top 3-year-old filly, whose right foreleg snapped less than a sixteenth of mile before the finish of Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Distaff, respected horsemen are asking serious questions.

They are wondering whether the Belmont racing surface contributed to the fatal injury, and whether the injuries to about a dozen other horses in recent weeks can be written off as coincidental.

Billy Badgett, Go For Wand’s trainer, declines to blame Belmont Park. “It was just a tough break,” the ashen-faced Badgett said at his barn Sunday morning. “She just dug down trying to beat that mare (Bayakoa, who went on to win the Distaff). If she hadn’t been a special filly, this wouldn’t have happened. She was just determined to win that race.”

Breeders’ Cup day claimed the lives of two other horses, their deaths clearly not related to the debate over the safety of the track. Mr. Nickerson, running in the Sprint, apparently had a heart attack, and Shaker Knit, who fell in the same spill, suffered partial paralysis and was destroyed Saturday night. Since last Tuesday, at least five horses have died from either racing or training injuries at Belmont.

Wayne Lukas, whose stable has been hardest hit by the wave of injuries, said that one of the reasons he withdrew Deposit Ticket from the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile was the track’s recent wave of injuries.

“I’m not a track superintendent,” Lukas said, “but this is something that should be looked in to.”

Jerry McKeon, the president of the racing association that runs Belmont, compared Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup with “having one of your relatives die at your wedding.”

Belmont’s track superintendent, Joe King, enjoys a national reputation. King is even known as a “track doctor,” who is frequently called in by other tracks with surface problems.

“The track is fine,” McKeon said. “It’s just that accidents do happen.”

LeRoy Jolley, who trains Meadow Star, the undefeated winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, was critical of Belmont’s racing surface even before Saturday. Jolley refers to the track as “Big Sandy.” Brian Mayberry, the California trainer who was forced to pull Garden Gal out of the Juvenile Fillies, said that Belmont is “like the Sahara Desert.”

In fact, the Belmont surface is about 90% sand. “You get weather like we have in the fall, with a lot of wind, and it’s difficult to keep water on the track,” Jolley said. “And since it’s also such a big track (the only 1 1/2-mile oval in the country), that makes it tougher to maintain. The sand just doesn’t hold the water as well. I’ve been a heavy critic of the track recently, but it’s odd, after what has happened in recent weeks, because I think the track’s better now than it’s been in the two previous years.”

Told of Jolley’s remarks, Mayberry said: “If it was worse two years ago, I can’t believe how bad it could have been, because it was an awful track on Saturday. When you see world-class sprinters running (six furlongs) in only 1:09 3/5, you have to believe there’s something wrong.

“Maybe this sounds like heresy around here, but I think the California tracks are far better for horses than the one they have here. One of the most difficult things a horse has to do is to adjust to different surfaces, and the Belmont surface is so much different than most surfaces, I can see where horses will have problems.”

Nick Zito, whose Thirty Six Red ran third in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, felt that Go For Wand’s injury was more a matter of physics than anything else.

“You have a 1,000-pound horse running 45 miles an hour,” Zito said. “And trying to do all that with ankles only as big as ours.”

Go For Wand, because of the wishes of her owner, Jane du Pont Lunger, will be buried at Saratoga, where the filly ran some of her best races. Mr. Nickerson will be buried in the infield at Belmont, not far from the graves of Ruffian and Timely Writer, other horses who died while racing.

Missing at Go For Wand’s barn Sunday morning was Rose Badgett, the filly’s exercise rider, who married the trainer less than a month ago. Her husband was back at work, mainly going through the motions, but his wife could not yet face the reality of looking into that open stall.

“Rose is not doing so great,” Badgett said. “She loved that horse more than she loved me. We’re all going to have to reach down and keep going. It’s hard to walk past her stall and see it empty.”

Go For Wand was always a handful around that stall, a high-strung filly who required much handling.

“If I was her groom, I’d quit,” Badgett once said.

Badgett was an assistant trainer for Woody Stephens when Swale won the 1984 Belmont Stakes and then died from an undetermined cause about a week after the race. “I was standing right next to him when he went down (in the shed row),” Badgett said.

On Saturday night, Jane du Pont Lunger called Badgett and they tried unsuccessfully to console each other.

“I hope you can find another one like her,” Lunger said.

Both knew that there is only a remote chance of that ever happening.