BELMONT STAKES : Sea Hero’s Fortunes Could Take a Turn for the Better This Time

Sea Hero had run less than a quarter of a mile in last month’s Preakness when his trainer, Mack Miller, suspected that the Kentucky Derby winner wasn’t going to be doing any encores.

As Sea Hero went by the stands the first time, Miller turned to the colt’s owner and breeder, Paul Mellon, and said: “He’s not handling the track. He’s climbing very badly.”

Miller’s fears materialized as Sea Hero struggled to finish fifth, 8 1/2 lengths behind the winner, Prairie Bayou, who had been second in the Derby.

One of the bugaboos of the Triple Crown--the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes--is that horses must run over a different racing surface in each race, and possibly widely varying ones from day to day at any given track. Churchill Downs, some Derby trainers said, was a different track on race day from the one their horses had trained over--deep and giving during the week, firm with little bounce on Saturday.

Two weeks later at Pimlico, the Preakness contenders were introduced to sharp turns and another change in surface.

“I hate post-mortems,” Mack Miller said, and then gave one. “When my horse worked before the Preakness, that Thursday, the track had been freshly harrowed and there was a lot of moisture in it early in the morning. I liked what I saw. Then on Preakness day, there was low humidity, a little bit of a breeze and the track dried out. In that 55 minutes between the race before the Preakness and our race, the track changed completely.”

For Saturday’s 125th running of the Belmont, the fickle Triple Crown pendulum could be swinging back in Sea Hero’s direction.

The 1 1/2-mile Belmont Park layout has big, sweeping turns, the kind Miller’s colt seemed to enjoy when he ran here as a 2-year-old; and there could be rain on the way, which would lead to an off track, the kind Sea Hero mastered when he was a convincing winner of the Champagne Stakes in October. The Champagne was the last of three consecutive victories at Belmont by Sea Hero, one of them on grass. That was his only stakes triumph until he won the Derby. Sea Hero’s only defeat at Belmont was a fourth-place finish in July, in his first race.

“The Preakness was tough on this horse,” Miller said. “He was an unhappy horse for four days after that, and didn’t eat much. I started back by just training him lightly, thinking that that might be in his best interests. But now I can’t keep him on the ground. He’s got the pedigree to accommodate 1 1/2 miles, and he likes his home grounds. Traffic in the race is one of my concerns. I think he’ll bounce back. I may be dead wrong, but I’ll find out.”

Mellon, who will turn 86 a week from today, has twice foiled Triple Crown bids by winning the Belmont. In 1964, his Quadrangle won here while Northern Dancer, winner of the Derby and Preakness, ran third. And in 1969, Mellon’s Arts And Letters won the Belmont by 5 1/2 lengths, preventing runner-up Majestic Prince from sweeping the series. Both of those Mellon horses were trained by Elliott Burch. Miller, 71, who began training for Mellon in 1977, was ninth with his only Belmont starter, Zulu Tom, in 1972.

A near-record 14 horses were entered Thursday for the 1 1/2-mile Belmont, the longest of the Triple Crown races. The largest field, 15 horses, ran in 1983, when Caveat won after bouncing off the fence a couple of times at the top of the stretch in one of Laffit Pincay’s gutsiest rides.

Don LaPlace, the Belmont oddsmaker, has made Prairie Bayou the 8-5 favorite and Sea Hero the second choice at 4-1.

Cherokee Run, who was second in the Preakness, drew the inside post and may try to go wire to wire, something that hasn’t been done since Swale in 1984. Cherokee Run, 8-1 on the morning line, will be ridden by Chris Antley.

The rest of the lineup: Virginia Rapids, Eddie Maple riding, 5-1; Kissin Kris, Jose Santos, 20-1; Colonial Affair, Julie Krone, 15-1; Prairie Bayou, Mike Smith, 8-5; Bull Inthe Heather, Jorge Chavez, 20-1; Raglan Road, Laffit Pincay, 30-1; El Bakan, Craig Perret, 20-1; Arinthod, Kent Desormeaux, 12-1; Only Alpha, Robbie Davis, 50-1; Sea Hero, Jerry Bailey, 4-1; Silver Of Silver, Jorge Vasquez, 20-1; Antrim Rd., Richard Migliore, 20-1; Wild Gale, Shane Sellers, 20-1. All of the horses carry 126 pounds.

Bleeders frequently run at more peril in New York than elsewhere because of the state rule that prohibits Lasix, a useful diuretic. Sea Hero, for example, ran for the first time on Lasix in Kentucky, finishing fourth in the Blue Grass and winning the Derby, but then couldn’t use the medication for the Preakness because of Maryland’s stricter rules.

“Not having Lasix shouldn’t matter,” Miller said. “We didn’t scope (inspect) him after the Preakness, because there were no signs of bleeding. He ran without Lasix last year here, and ran a big race in the Champagne.”

Besides the $745,900 purse, $447,540 of which goes to the winner, there’s a $1-million Triple Crown bonus that goes to the horse that runs in all the races and has the best finishes. On a 10-5-3-1 system for the first four positions, Prairie Bayou has 15 points, five more than Sea Hero.

Horse Racing Notes

The last horse to score a Kentucky Derby-Belmont double was Swale and before that, with the exception of Triple Crown champions Seattle Slew and Affirmed, it was Bold Forbes in 1976. . . . When trainer Woody Stephens saddled five straight Belmont winners starting in 1982, Laffit Pincay rode three of them in a row--Conquistador Cielo in 1982, then Caveat and Swale. . . . Pincay will be riding Raglan Road for the first time. Chris McCarron was aboard Raglan Road for a come-from-behind victory in a minor 1 1/16-mile stake at Pimlico on Preakness day. . . . The $400,000 Nassau County Handicap, the fifth race in the nine-race American Championship Racing Series, will be run at Belmont on Saturday. Devil His Due, who has won three in a row, including the Pimlico Special and the Gulfstream Handicap in the series, is the high weight at 123 pounds and the 8-5 favorite in the 1 1/8-mile race. Others running are Sand Lizard, Strike The Gold, Valley Crossing, Offbeat, Missionary Ridge, Honest Ensign and West By West. Strike The Gold, who hasn’t won a stake since last year’s Nassau County, is the 3-1 second choice despite having run last in the Pimlico Special.