TRIPLE CROWN

Trainer Bud Delp said he has never watched a tape of the 1979 Belmont Stakes. For Delp, watching the race the first time was enough.

The 1979 Belmont was supposed to be a Triple Crown coronation for Delp’s Spectacular Bid, who had obliterated the opposition in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Instead, the Belmont produced one of racing’s biggest upsets, and now, 20 years later, Delp still sputters when he talks about it.

The large safety pin Delp found protruding from one of Spectacular Bid’s hoofs on the morning of the race was one thing; the Belmont ride by young Ron Franklin was something else.

“Even with the pin, he was a cinch,” Delp said. “But he couldn’t overcome that ride. It was a jackass ride, just plain stupidity.”

Unlike jockey Chris Antley, who will take a lot of experience into Saturday’s Belmont when he tries to ride Charismatic to a Triple Crown sweep, Franklin was 19 in 1979 and not accustomed to riding in big races. Right out of the gate, Franklin sent Spectacular Bid in pursuit of Gallant Best, an 85-1 shot, and the race fell apart for Delp’s colt. Coastal, who had skipped the Derby and Preakness and was supplemented into the Belmont for $20,000 after a 13-length win in the Peter Pan Stakes, came on in the stretch by 3 1/4 lengths, with Golden Act beating out Spectacular Bid by a neck for second place.

“Ronnie rated him in the Derby and the Preakness, but I don’t know what he was thinking in the Belmont,” Delp said the other day from Maryland, where his stable is based. “I would have even preferred that terrible ride he gave the horse in the Florida Derby. He got stopped every which way that day, but at least he was off the pace, where he was supposed to be.”

Spectacular Bid, a $37,000 yearling, raced for Harry Meyerhoff, a Baltimore real estate developer; Harry’s wife, Teresa, and his son, Tom. After the Florida Derby, which resulted in a 4 1/2-length win despite Franklin’s contretemps, Delp asked the Meyerhoffs if they would consider switching jockeys.

“Ronnie didn’t know what he was doing out there,” Delp said. “You couldn’t make that many mistakes against a horse like Flying Paster [the best 3-year-old in California] and get away with it. I don’t want Spectacular Bid ever to lose again.”

After the Belmont, the Meyerhoffs would replace Franklin with Bill Shoemaker, but in Florida in March they stuck with Franklin.

“I still think he fits the horse,” Harry Meyerhoff said then, in explaining his decision.

Because of small fields, there was no pressure on Franklin in the next two races that preceded the Kentucky Derby. Spectacular Bid won by 12 lengths in the Flamingo and by seven in the Blue Grass, which drew only three other horses. Easy wins in the 10-horse Derby and the five-horse Preakness stretched the gray colt’s winning streak to 12 races.

Two days before the Belmont, post positions were drawn in the dining room at the track, and during a news conference afterward, it was Harry Meyerhoff himself who asked one of the questions.

“Can this horse sprint a mile and a half?” Meyerhoff asked of Franklin, who gave an innocuous answer.

Reminded of this the other day, Meyerhoff remembered.

“We were very confident going into the race,” he said. “I asked the question just to make sure we didn’t do anything we didn’t have to. Secretariat won the [1973] Belmont by 31 lengths, and all we wanted to do was win.”

The only time the Triple Crown has been swept in successive years was when Seattle Slew and Affirmed captured the races in 1977 and 1978. Spectacular Bid would have been the third straight champion.

Delp was the most confident of all. After the Preakness, he said: “This is the best horse that ever looked through a bridle.”

When Delp arrived at Belmont Park at 6 a.m. on Belmont Stakes day, Mo Hall, the groom, was panic-stricken. He told Delp that Spectacular Bid was lame, and when the trainer went to the colt’s stall, he found him standing on three legs, with the four-inch pin, the type used to secure horse bandages, sticking out from the bottom of the fourth.

The pin was embedded in the hoof. At first, Delp was unable to pull it out, and no veterinarian was immediately available. “It was stuck in there as hard as cement,” Delp said.

Finally, the pin was eased out, accompanied by the flow of a dark-looking liquid. Delp packed the foot in Bowie Mud, a putty-like material made of red clay and mixed with vinegar and Epsom salts.

“I didn’t want to tub him [submerge the foot in ice],” Delp said, “because that would freeze it and might mask other things.”

Delp said he called Harry Meyerhoff at his hotel.

“If he’s not right, I’m going to scratch him,” Delp said.

Meyerhoff said he was sick to his stomach after Delp called.

Delp also told Franklin about the fluke injury, something he regretted later. Delp said that Franklin rode Spectacular Bid with more urgency because he knew the horse was hurting.

By 4 p.m., about 90 minutes before the Belmont, Spectacular Bid’s condition had improved and Delp decided to run. On paper, The Bid didn’t have much to beat. Coastal was the second choice, at 4-1, and after him the odds on the six others were 10-1 or higher.

Delp and Meyerhoff groaned when Franklin pushed Spectacular Bid for the lead. Besides the wrong-headed tactics, the colt wasn’t changing lead feet. He ran the entire 1 1/2 miles on the same lead, which means that a horse isn’t shifting his weight to the opposite side of his body.

“He was sound when he went out there, but in the race you could see that he was hurting,” Delp said. “His legs moved like pistons in his other races, but not this day.”

The safety-pin excuse lacked credibility because Delp didn’t say anything about the injury until the next day, after Spectacular Bid had been vanned home to Maryland. Delp said that he didn’t say anything on Belmont day because he didn’t want to be accused of making an alibi.

With Shoemaker taking over, Spectacular Bid ran until he was retired at the end of 1980. He finished with 26 wins in 30 starts, earned $2.7 million and was voted horse of the year in 1980. Wintering at Santa Anita in 1980, he won the Strub Stakes and, under 130 pounds, the Santa Anita Handicap. Shoemaker has said that he was the best horse he ever rode.

Syndicated as a stallion for $22 million, Spectacular Bid has sired only one Grade I winner and now stands at a farm in upstate New York, where his stud fee, which was $150,000 in the early years, has dropped to $3,500.

Franklin’s career quickly disintegrated. He was a cocaine user who went through suspensions, a divorce and finally a ban from racing. Delp said that Franklin, now 39, still lives in the Baltimore area, with his mother, and is a good carpenter and handyman.

To his credit, Franklin has taken responsibility for botching the Belmont. “I got a little antsy,” he told the Baltimore Sun a few years ago. “I went too soon with the horse. I’d never let him go that early before. I sure didn’t ride him to perfection.”

Chasing the TRIPLE CROWN

Charismatic is trying to become only the 12th horse to win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes

BELMONT STAKES

* POST: 2:30 p.m. Saturday

* WHERE: Belmont Race Course, Elmont, N.Y.

* TV: 1:30 p.m., Channel 7

****

THE DRAW

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PP Horse Odds 1. Teletable 99-1 2. Vision And Verse 20-1 3. Silverbulletday 4-1 4. Charismatic 2-1 5. Pineaff 30-1 6. Lemon Drop Kid 20-1 7. Patience Game 20-1 8. Adonis 20-1 9. Prime Directive 30-1 10. Menifee 7-2 11. Stephen Got Even 10-1 12. Best Of Luck 6-1

*--*

DRAW STORY, PAGE 11

CLOSE CALLS

Since Spectacular Bid in 1979, the other horses that have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness but lost the Belmont and missed out on the Triple Crown:

Story, Page 11

PLEASANT COLONY / 1981. Belmont finish: 3rd

ALYSHEBA / 1987. Belmont finish: 4th

SUNDAY SILENCE / 1989. Belmont finish: 2nd

SILVER CHARM / 1997. Belmont finish: 2nd

REAL QUIET / 1998. Belmont finish: 2nd