For Loblolly, Only Emptiness : Prairie Bayou: The Preakness winner tried to keep going after suffering a broken leg on the Belmont backstretch, but the finish had been reached.

In trainer Tom Bohannan’s office, next to his barn at Belmont Park, Prairie Bayou’s saddle cloth, with his name on it, was neatly folded on a table behind the desk.

Bohannan sat at the desk, staring at a beer can, his suit jacket off and his necktie discarded. A few friends were in the room as he politely waved away a reporter at the door.

“I’ve answered questions from about 20 of you already,” Bohannan said. “I’ll be available in the morning (today).”

The Belmont Stakes was about 90 minutes old, and Bohannan, his eyes red from crying, was the latest horseman to be shattered by a Triple Crown tragedy. Three weeks ago, it was trainer Wayne Lukas’ Union City, who broke down in the Preakness at Pimlico and was destroyed. This time it was Bohannan’s Prairie Bayou, who had won the Preakness after finishing second in the Kentucky Derby. On the backstretch, with seven furlongs left to run, the 3-year-old gelding seemed to be running comfortably when his left foreleg caved in.

The come-from-behind horse, who was 10th in the 13-horse field at the time, suffered a compound fracture of the cannon bone below the knee and was beyond saving. As had been Union City, Prairie Bayou was given a lethal injection.

“When he broke down, it sounded real bad,” said jockey Mike Smith, who tried to stay aboard but in a few strides was tossed to the ground as Prairie Bayou kept running on courage alone. He went another five-sixteenths of a mile, almost completing the length of the backstretch, before an outrider pulled him up.

From his box seat near the finish line, Bohannan sprinted in the direction of his injured horse. After Colonial Affair, the Belmont winner, and the rest of the field passed the wire, Bohannan crossed the track, ran around the tote board and blindly ran the width of the Belmont Park infield, about half a mile, to the backstretch. There another outrider dismounted from his pony and Bohannan climbed on, galloping in the direction of the horse ambulance and Prairie Bayou.

By the time he got there, the Loblolly Stable gelding’s fate had all but been decided. “It is the type of injury that cannot be repaired,” a veterinarian said. “He was destroyed approximately 30 minutes after the accident.”

Prairie Bayou, who was the favorite, lost by 2 1/2 lengths to Sea Hero in the Kentucky Derby. Prairie Bayou was the leader in the $1-million Triple Crown bonus standings going into the Belmont, but to be eligible horses must finish all the races, so Sea Hero earned the bonus.

“I’m sorry,” said Paul Mellon, Sea Hero’s owner. “Under the circumstances, it’s a little bit sad.”

Said Smith: “He never warmed up better, and I didn’t sense that anything was going wrong at all. He wasn’t going bad at all. He just took a bad step, or something. When he dropped his head, he pulled the reins out of my hands.

“I was losing my balance, but I stayed on for a bit. These things happen to us all the time, but this horse was special. I used to play with him at the barn in the morning, graze him and stuff. He was a real sweet horse. So calm, you could put your kid on him and walk him around.”