Memory Refuses to Fade : Breeders’ Cup: Go For Wand broke down five years ago at Belmont.

To soften the ugly recollection of Go For Wand’s tragic death at Belmont Park five years ago, trainer Bill Badgett recalls the filly’s accomplishments in her short career: 10 victories in 13 races; stakes victories in New York and Kentucky, many of them by gaping margins.

But then the pictures get in Badgett’s way. The photographs of Go For Wand struggling to stand on three legs after her right foreleg had snapped at the ankle during a furious stretch drive with Bayakoa in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. The pictures of the filly’s head being cradled by Rosemary Badgett, the trainer’s wife of three weeks, in front of 51,000 people.

The grisly pictures angered many people when they were first published, and Bill Badgett doesn’t know why they have to be dragged out now, for the anniversary of the worst day in Breeders’ Cup history. In 1990, an outraged Judy McCarron, the wife of the California jockey, wrote a letter to Sports Illustrated, upbraiding its editors for what she considered immense poor taste. The Times got letters of complaint for the pictures it ran.

The other day, the New York Times revisited the day of Go For Wand’s death and ran three of the pictures.

“I really don’t think that was necessary,” said Badgett, who had given the newspaper an interview for the story that went with the photos.

Badgett says that he is trying to put the death of Go For Wand behind him, but of course he never will. No one who was there that day ever will. There were four more Breeders’ Cup races to be run, yet hundreds of people with vacant faces filed out of the track after the Distaff, unable to stomach any more. In the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, run about an hour before the Distaff, there had been a spill on the far turn, and two horses had died, one of them of a heart attack.

In the four Breeders’ Cups since then, Badgett hasn’t had any starters. The 43-year-old trainer’s career has nose-dived since the loss of Go For Wand. The legendary Greentree Stable, which campaigned such long-ago stalwarts as Stage Door Johnny and Tom Fool, folded its tent, eliminating about half of Badgett’s public stable. Badgett spent about $30,000 trying to clear his name after one of his horses tested positive for cocaine.

Saturday, for the 12th Breeders’ Cup, and the first at Belmont Park since 1990, Badgett is finally back with a horse. Flitch, a 3-year-old colt owned by John Ed Anthony, is 20-1 to win the $2-million Turf.

Anthony, who has known tragedy of his own at this historic track, campaigned the Tom Bohannan-trained Prairie Bayou, who won the 1993 Preakness, then was destroyed after breaking down in the Belmont Stakes three weeks later.

Flitch has won only three of 11 starts this year but was first in the Lawrence Realization Handicap at Belmont on Sept. 27.

“We’re taking a big chance running him,” Badgett said. “But it’s a wide-open race, and the way it will play out depends on how the turf is and who likes it. We’ve had rain and we’ll get some more, so it’s going to be soft, which my horse likes.”

Go For Wand was voted best 3-year-old filly in 1990, and her breeder and owner, Jane Lunger, was subjected to a video rerun of the breakdown when the show announcing horse of the year was nationally televised from San Francisco a few months later. The great-grandmother’s tears flowed again that day.

Lunger arranged for Go For Wand’s remains to be buried in the infield at Saratoga, the track in Upstate New York.

“I guess that’s because she ran so well there,” Badgett said. “She won the Test [Stakes] and the Alabama at Saratoga the same year as the Breeders’ Cup.”

Ridden by Randy Romero, Go For Wand was a 7-10 favorite in the Distaff, with Bayakoa, who had won the Distaff at Gulfstream Park the year before and been voted an Eclipse Award, and Laffit Pincay next in the betting at 11-10. None of the five other starters was given much of a chance, and with an eighth of a mile left, that’s the way the 1 1/8-mile race developed. Go For Wand held a half-length lead, on the inside, and after Bayakoa it was six lengths back to the next horse.

As they neared the sixteenth pole, the lead horses were virtually even. New Yorkers, accustomed to seeing Go For Wand explode in the stretch, were thinking that she would leave Bayakoa in her wake. Californians, used to seeing Bayakoa run, were familiar with her tenacity and were confident that she wouldn’t let Go For Wand get away. Pincay said later that Bayakoa still had plenty of run left. It would have been a finish-line dash for the ages.

Romero was whipping left-handed when Go For Wand’s leg caved in. She stayed upright, instinctively staggering toward the finish line but reeling across the track, toward the outside rail. Romero was catapulted over his mount’s head and hit the ground hard. He rode in another Breeders’ Cup race later that day, but then he went for X-rays and was told that he had broken eight ribs and his right shoulder.

It was one of the gloomiest winner’s-circle ceremonies ever held. Frank and Jan Whitham, Bayakoa’s owners, and their trainer, Ron McAnally, could find no smiles. Theirs was a hollow victory.

“Here we race these animals for our pleasure, and they give us everything,” McAnally said. “And then something like this happens.”

Romero, his body sore from repeated injuries, quit riding for a time, but now is back in the saddle in Kentucky, trying to revive his career. Frank Whitham was killed in the crash of his private plane a couple of years later.

“She was a great filly,” Romero said of Go For Wand. “She was something special. She could do anything you wanted her to.”

Bill and Rosemary Badgett are rearing a young family--they have two sons and a daughter. Jane Lunger has become the Badgett stable’s biggest owner.

“Losing Go For Wand was like losing somebody in your family,” said Bill Badgett, the son of a jockey. “Her death, and then the Greentree thing and the cocaine charge all got to me. The cocaine thing was a royal pain in the neck. I considered getting out of the business for a while. But I like it too much. Once you get this game in your blood, it’s hard to get it out.”

Horse Racing Notes

Cigar’s final workout for the Breeders’ Cup Classic produced a sharp time of 1:00 4/5 for five furlongs. “I wasn’t on him for the work, but that time shows that he’s eager to run,” jockey Jerry Bailey said. “That’s a lot faster than his customary 1:01s and 1:02s.” . . . Gary Stevens had his choice of Hennessy, Honour And Glory or Editor’s Note in the Juvenile, and chose Honour And Glory, who won the Breeders’ Futurity for him at Keeneland by 2 1/2 lengths. Stevens said he asked Wayne Lukas, who trains all three, for his input in making the decision and Lukas threw up his hands. “I love Honour And Glory’s chances, and I’m praying for a good trip,” Stevens said. “But there’s not a whole lot of difference in the ability of these colts. I think that if you ran the three of them against each other in three races, there’d be three different winners.”