Regrets Follow Favorite’s Fade

The large white message board, which stood on an easel in front of Unbridled’s Song’s barn all week, was there to give reporters quickie information about the horse. It contained two messages Saturday.

Before the Kentucky Derby, it said: “Unbridled’s Song’s Doing Great.”

After the Derby, it read: “Unbridled’s Song . . . We’ll Be Back!!”

Maybe he will be, in the Preakness, the next leg of the Triple Crown, in two weeks. But for now, the Unbridled’s Song camp is reeling from his fifth-place finish as he became still another Kentucky Derby favorite to lose at Churchill Downs. The last Derby favorite to win was Spectacular Bid in 1979.

After Unbridled’s Song was scoped and found not to have bled in the Derby, his trainer, Jim Ryerson, went into seclusion in his barn office for at least a couple of hours. Buzz Chace, the manager for owner Ernie Paragallo’s racing stable, commented briefly before excusing himself from a group of reporters. Finally, as darkness approached, the cocksure Paragallo emerged from Ryerson’s office and made quite a concession for him.

“I probably wish we hadn’t run,” Paragallo said. “He had nothing in the tank after the eighth pole.”

Paragallo wondered whether Unbridled’s Song’s sensational workout--half a mile in 46 seconds--on Wednesday had sent him over the top.

“We had to work him that day,” he said. “We had to make sure [jockey Mike Smith] had some confidence in the horse. But maybe he got away from us.”

Instead of changing shoes for the third time in a week, and racing Unbridled’s Song with conventional plates, Ryerson left bar shoes on the gray colt Saturday, to protect an injured hoof. A horse hasn’t won the Derby in bar shoes since Lawrin in 1938.

On the turn for home, Unbridled’s Song had a two-length lead, but he slipped and slid toward the center of the track. Cavonnier went by him on the inside, and then Grindstone nosed him out at the wire.

“I thought he looked pretty good about the five-eighths pole,” Smith said, “but as the pace began to pick up a little more, he was really struggling with those bar shoes on. He couldn’t get the traction everybody else did. Coming out of the turn, he floated out a bit, and that was because he couldn’t get a hold of it. He was just trying to find a better part of the race track.”

Before Unbridled’s Song had ever run a race, Paragallo predicted that he would win the Derby, and after a win in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last fall, he said that the horse would sweep the Triple Crown. He repeated his boasts last week.

“The other horses [in the Derby] still aren’t in the same league with my horse,” he said Saturday. “But he just had too much to overcome.”

Before the race, Ryerson explained why Unbridled’s Song was going to run in bar shoes.

“He has trained good in them, so it was a no-brainer,” he said. “If he had not trained good in them, we would have had a tougher decision.”

Horse Racing Notes

Mecke, who ran fifth in last year’s Kentucky Derby, has become a grass horse and Saturday, in the race before the Derby, he beat Petit Poucet by a head to win the $238,400 Early Times Turf Classic. Winged Victory was third and Sandpit, the 2-1 favorite, was fifth. Mecke, ridden by Pat Day, paid $17.40, running 1 1/8 miles in 1:49 2/5. . . . Trainer Bob Baffert and jockey Chris McCarron, who settled for second in the Derby with Cavonnier, won the $114,800 Churchill Downs Handicap with Criollito, who beat Forty Won by 1 1/4 lengths and paid $10.20. Powis Castle finished third. . . . Also on the Derby card, owner Allen Paulson’s Apolda, ridden by Jerry Bailey and trained by Bill Mott, won the $75,000 Providian Mile. . . . Mott confirmed that Cigar, headed for the Hollywood Gold Cup on June 30, will run first in the Massachusetts Handicap at Suffolk Downs on June 1.