Tabasco Cat Keeps Up the Heat in Belmont : Horse racing: Colt repeats Preakness victory, again beating Derby winner Go For Gin.

With an eighth of a mile to go in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, Go For Gin and his jockey, Chris McCarron, appeared on their way to a repeat of their victory in the Kentucky Derby five weeks before.

McCarron, who had Go For Gin far off the fence, looked to his left to see who might be challenging from the inside. But the trouble wasn’t to McCarron’s left, it was on the outside where Tabasco Cat was getting a patient ride from Pat Day.

Later, McCarron watched tape of the 126th Belmont in the jockeys’ quarters. When Tabasco Cat caught Go For Gin, McCarron shook his head and said: “He showed some terrific acceleration. My horse cut sharply at the quarter pole. I thought we were going to win it. Even when the other horse collared us, my horse never quit.”

Day, who won his first Belmont with Easy Goer in 1989, didn’t start whipping Tabasco Cat until they had passed Go For Gin. He hit him three times from the left side, then seven more times right-handed before they reached the wire. Tabasco Cat tends to loaf once he makes the lead.

Tabasco Cat beat Go For Gin by two lengths, and Strodes Creek, the 13-10 favorite, was another half-length back. Signal Tap ran fourth, Amathos fifth and Ulises was last in a six-horse field that lost Brocco because of sore hoof apparently suffered during a Thursday workout.

Trainer Charlie Whittingham said the noise from the crowd of 42,659 spooked Strodes Creek when he straightened for his stretch run. “He came out of the bridle when he heard the roar of the crowd,” jockey Jerry Bailey said. “He stopped running for a couple of jumps.”

Tabasco Cat paid $8.80 as the third betting choice, running 1 1/2 miles in 2:26 4/5 and earning $392,280 for his owners and breeders, William T. Young and David P. Reynolds.

Trainer Wayne Lukas had gone 30 months without a major stakes victory before Tabasco Cat won the Preakness three weeks ago, beating Go For Gin by three-quarters of length. Saturday, after winning his first Belmont, Lukas said: “I wanted this horse to be special. I knew I could never separate the accident from the horse. I think this capped it all off.”

On the morning of Dec. 15 at Santa Anita, five weeks after he had finished third in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, Tabasco Cat got loose from his handlers and ran over Jeff Lukas, the trainer’s son and chief assistant.

The younger Lukas suffered multiple skull fractures and was in a coma, near death, for more than a month. He might never have complete vision in his right eye, but Lukas will rejoin his father June 27 at their Santa Anita barn, working a few hours in the mornings while continuing rehabilitation later in the day.

“It was 32 days of pure hell,” Wayne Lukas said Saturday. “But we wanted to separate the horse from the accident, even though that would never be totally possible. I dropped out of sight for 10 or 12 weeks, just to work with this horse. Everything the horse did, I was there. I owed it to Mr. Young, who supported me all through that Union City thing.”

In last year’s Preakness, Union City, owned by Young, broke down and was destroyed, triggering criticism of Lukas’ training practices.

“This makes up for a lot of disappointments,” Young said Saturday. “One thing about racing is that it’s not dull. There are a lot of peaks and valleys, and Union City was one of the valleys. Wayne says that he had a trying year this year, but he had a trying year last year too. I know that he’s lived with (Tabasco Cat), because every time I’d call him he’d be out grazing with the horse. Whether he played with him in the sand, I don’t know.”

Said Day: “Wayne’s gotten right between this horse’s ears all year. He understands this horse. He’s got him physically sound, and he knows what makes him happy.”

Lukas has won four other Triple Crown races--the Derby with Winning Colors and the Preakness with Codex, Tank’s Prospect and Tabasco Cat.

“I’d like to play the first Saturday in May over,” Lukas said, “running on a dry track and with all the players getting a good trip. But that’s not the way it is in racing, and you know it going in. You’ve just got to count your blessings in these races and be happy that you’ve won two of them.”

Horse Racing Notes

Tabasco Cat, a son of Storm Cat and Barbicue Sauce, has won seven of 12 starts and became the 16th horse to score a Preakness-Belmont double. He became only the third horse since 1975 to do so, joining Risen Star (1988) and Hansel (1991). In other stakes on the Belmont day card, Paradise Creek scored a 6 3/4-length victory in the $150,000 Early Times Manhattan, You And I won the $111,800 Riva Ridge by 2 3/4 lengths and Bay Street Star was a four-length winner in the $108,100 Colin, which was reduced to four starters with the scratches of Numerous and Unaccounted For.

Paradise Creek, ridden by Pat Day, ran 1 1/4 miles on grass in 1:57 3/5, missing the North American record by one-fifth of a second. . . . You and I, with Chris McCarron aboard, broke the track record for seven furlongs in 1:20 1/5. . . . Lakeway, upset by Sardula in the Kentucky Oaks, will run in today’s $200,000 Mother Goose at Belmont. The favorite will be Inside Information, who has won five in a row.

* MISSING IN ACTION: Santa Anita Derby winner Brocco is scratched from the Belmont because of a sore hoof. C14.