The Roger Maris of Horse Racing?

If Real Quiet wins the $1-million Belmont Stakes this Saturday in New York, his take-home pay would be $5.6 million--$600,000 for the winning purse and a $5-million bonus for sweeping the Triple Crown series.

That would break a record for one day at the races. The most ever earned by a horse was the $2.6 million earned in 1985 by Spend A Buck, whose $600,000 win in the Jersey Derby was sweetened by Garden State Park’s four-race bonus worth $2 million.

A victory in the Belmont would also increase Real Quiet’s career earnings to $7.5 million, making the 3-year-old colt one of the richest horses ever. Two-time horse-of-the-year Cigar retired with a total that was $185 short of $10 million and Skip Away boosted his earnings to $8.3 million with Saturday’s victory in the Massachusetts Handicap at Suffolk Downs in Boston.

But in racing, money does not necessarily a reputation make. Critics are already lining up to take potshots at Real Quiet, who has only four wins in 14 starts. There have been suggestions that his victories in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness have been tarnished because of the solid horses that weren’t there. Lil’s Lad and the undefeated Event Of The Year missed the Triple Crown series because of injuries; Halory Hunter and Coronado’s Quest were knocked out of the Preakness with injuries the week of the race; and Indian Charlie, undefeated before running third in the Derby, was the likely Preakness favorite before he was sidelined by battle fatigue.

Real Quiet should have a full career ahead of him, and the chance to pile up some more wins, but right now his record through the Triple Crown is certain to be the weakest of any horse that has swept the series. Of the 11 that have, Sir Barton (13 wins in 31 starts), Omaha (nine wins in 22 starts) and Assault (18 wins in 42 starts) are the only ones that had sub-.500 records when they retired.

“If he wins the Triple Crown, he’ll be a star, but he’ll be tarnished,” John Veitch said. Veitch has the distinction of training the only horse that finished second in all three Triple Crown races, his Alydar losing to Affirmed by total margins of 1 3/4 lengths in 1978.

Veitch says the sidelined horses have made it much easier for Real Quiet to get this far.

“Real Quiet will need something after the Triple Crown to be the defining act in his career,” he said. “If you beat pugs, all you are is the champion pug. I don’t think he’ll belong in the pantheon with those other horses. There’ll be an asterisk next to his name.”

Charlie Whittingham, the Hall of Fame trainer who won the Derby in the 1980s with Ferdinand and Sunday Silence, has always said that you “shouldn’t knock horses until they’ve been dead at least 10 years.” Bob Baffert, who trains Real Quiet for owner Mike Pegram, feels that Real Quiet deserves at least one more year on the track before the jury arrives with its verdict.

“You can’t judge a horse until he’s finished running as a 4-year-old,” Baffert said Friday at Churchill Downs, where Real Quiet was training for the Belmont. “Some of things I’ve heard about my colt are the same things I heard about Holy Bull [horse of the year in 1994 without winning a Triple Crown race]. Just to compete in California, you’ve got to be a very good horse. My horse won the Derby and then he annihilated them in the Preakness. I think that’s a sign of a great horse.”

In his last eight starts, Real Quiet has four wins, two seconds and one third. He won the Hollywood Futurity at the end of his 2-year-old season. At Santa Anita this winter, he ran second twice, in the San Felipe against Artax and in the Santa Anita Derby against Indian Charlie, another Baffert trainee, who was undefeated at the time. Real Quiet’s only bad race during this stretch came in January at Golden Gate Fields. On a sloppy track, he was last in a field of eight, beaten by more than 22 lengths. Baffert says now that it was a mistake to run him that day.

Real Quiet’s first six starts--all losses--were one-turn races of a mile or less, two of them at Santa Fe Downs, a minor league track in New Mexico. The colt broke his maiden last October at Santa Anita, running 1 1/16 miles, his first opportunity around two turns.

“When you assess his record, you have to throw out the sprint races,” said Pegram, who paid $17,000 to buy the crooked-legged Real Quiet when he was a yearling. “The trip to Santa Fe [New Mexico for a $571,000 race] was a mistake. It was a case of a greedy owner and a dumb trainer. The horse’s record around two turns is outstanding. He might have been second twice at Santa Anita, but those were winning races. I think if he wins the Belmont, he’ll deserve all the credit.”

Jimmy Jones, 90, is one of the few horsemen around who has experienced all of the Triple Crown champions. Jones even saw Sir Barton, the first Triple Crown champion, lose a match race against Man o’ War in 1920. Jones and Ben Jones, his father, are both credited with training Citation, the 1948 Triple Crown champion, and Ben Jones also trained Whirlaway, who swept the races in 1941.

Jimmy Jones doesn’t throw the mantle of greatness around loosely.

“I think this is pretty important,” he said on the phone from Parnell, Mo. “Usually when you have a Triple Crown champion, it’s done by a pretty fair horse in a weak year. I don’t even consider Whirlaway great. He would have been better if he’d had better manners, but a lot of times you had to set up races in order for him to win.”

Of the Triple Crown champions, Jones said that Gallant Fox, Count Fleet, Assault, Citation, Secretariat and Seattle Slew could be listed with the greats. That leaves out Sir Barton, Omaha, War Admiral, Whirlaway and Affirmed, who was the last horse to sweep the series.

“Affirmed was good,” Jones said, “but I think he won the three races because he had the best rider [Steve Cauthen]. His jock outrode the other jock [Jorge Velasquez on Alydar].”

And Real Quiet?

“He looked better in the Preakness,” Jones said. “But he had a lucky race in the Derby. The other horse [second-place finisher Victory Gallop] had a wide trip. This isn’t a great 3-year-old crop. They’re well-balanced, and there’s some ability there, but as we’ve gone along a lot of them have been hurt. If it’s not a great crop, you can’t say that the horse that beat them all is great.”