Ridden by Doubt

Gary Stevens knows full well the feeling of riding a horse that wins two-thirds of the Triple Crown. The difference Saturday, should Point Given and Stevens add the Belmont Stakes to their Preakness win, is that this year’s booty will have come at the tail end of the series, instead of on the front end, as Silver Charm did in 1997.

But with each Triple Crown experience, there are the heartaches as well. Silver Charm, after winning the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, could have become the first Triple Crown champion since Affirmed in 1978, but out the window went that distinction, along with the $5-million bonus the colt could have earned. Stevens’ share--$500,000--also vanished when Touch Gold nipped Silver Charm by three-quarters of a length at the Belmont wire.

Should Point Given give Stevens and his trainer, Bob Baffert, the Belmont that eluded Silver Charm, there will still be a bittersweet feeling in their camp. Point Given was being widely advertised as Triple Crown timber entering the Derby, and since his fifth-place finish at Churchill Downs, Baffert and Stevens have replayed the race so much in their minds that it hurts.

“Will I be haunted by not winning the Derby if Point Given wins the Belmont?” Stevens said, repeating a question. “Definitely. It will haunt me every bit as much as it did when Silver Charm didn’t win the Belmont. Those are things you just never forget.”

In the Derby, instead of letting several speedsters eliminate one another with suicide early fractions, Stevens had Point Given close to the front. Like the other pace-setters, the colt had nothing left and was beaten by more than 11 lengths.

“Bob has analyzed the race to death, and so have I,” Stevens said. “There’s no one to blame. I’ve convinced myself that the horse just got beat.”

Stevens knows what it’s like to play the spoiler in the Belmont. In 1998, the year after Touch Gold’s win over Silver Charm, he brought Victory Gallop from behind to nose out Baffert’s Real Quiet, scotching that Triple Crown bid. But Stevens, who also won the 1995 Belmont with Thunder Gulch, has been on the sidelines here the last two years, having no mount in 1999 and having temporarily retired last year.

The 38-year-old rider’s Hall of Fame career has been a series of agent switches and stops and starts. The retirement and trips hither and yon interrupted his stranglehold on the Southern California circuit. The only thing that has been consistent is his unquenchable drive to win. Stevens does not suffer losses gladly, and he feels that he belongs in the winner’s circle every day, in every race that he rides.

After Saturday’s Belmont, he will be off again, to ride the Royal Ascot meet in England. He has ridden in England before, guessing wrongly that the British emphasis on grass racing would be kinder on his arthritic knees, and he also did a stint in Hong Kong in 1995.

The undulating English courses, while offering more cushion for the horses Stevens rides, nevertheless give his sore knees a pounding. Stevens will be back at Hollywood Park this month, but then he plans to give himself a breather.

“I’m going to take it easy until Del Mar opens [on July 18],” Stevens said.

His off-the-track life has been complicated by the December 2000 death of Chris Antley, a fellow rider and good friend, and a couple of death threats that followed soon afterward.

“I miss Chris, and it’s a shame what happened because he was such a talent, but I’m just trying to move on,” Stevens said. “I guess the death threats are something that just goes with being in the public eye. I prefer not to talk about them. The more you talk about them, the more you give people out there encouragement to keep doing these things.”

After announcing his retirement in late 1999, Stevens took on an assistant trainer’s job with Alex Hassinger Jr., then the lead conditioner for Ahmed Salman, the Saudi Arabian prince who races Point Given. Stevens was once a contract rider for Salman’s Thoroughbred Corp., and a few days before this year’s Derby, the prince said he would make room for him in his organization, no matter which direction Stevens’ career took.

“Gary Stevens is a gentleman and a world-class rider,” Salman said. “Riding, training horses, anything connected with horses, he will always be a big help to my stable and is welcome to work for me.”

“The first three months [of retirement from riding], I didn’t miss it,” Stevens said. “But then I started to get the itch back.”

Stevens vaulted back into the national spotlight late last year with a win aboard War Chant in the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Churchill Downs.

Stevens rides fewer of the minor races on a typical racing program and lubricates his knees twice a day to reduce the inflammation. He stayed on the sidelines for 10 months, returning to action with the start of last fall’s Oak Tree meeting at Santa Anita.

Acknowledging that Stevens’ riding skills hadn’t been dulled by the long layoff, Baffert picked him to ride Point Given for the first time in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs last November. The colt’s late run in a big, congested field was a nose short of Macho Uno at the wire, but both horsemen knew that this was a horse who’d only get better with more seasoning. Wins in the Hollywood Futurity, the San Felipe Stakes and the Santa Anita Derby inflated their confidence, and might have contributed to Point Given’s dud in the Kentucky Derby.

“He wasn’t himself in the Derby,” Stevens said. “My mistake was that I thought he could be 75% of himself and still win. I rode him differently in the Preakness. He started towing me, and when I turned him loose, it was up to him. That’s the real way he likes to be ridden. The first turn at Pimlico, it felt like the Santa Anita Derby all over again. He got the trip I had hoped he would get in the Derby.”

There’s a close mutual respect between Salman and Stevens, an uncommon bond for a horse owner and a jockey.

“The prince is a horseman,” Stevens said. “He understands horses and strategy. He felt that this horse had to be ridden a little more patiently and he was completely right. That was a good tip he gave me going into the Preakness.”

Stevens’ horsemanship in the Preakness was not lost on John Ward, the trainer of Monarchos, the Derby winner who finished sixth at Pimlico.

“Gary rode him perfectly,” Ward said Wednesday at the post-position draw for the Belmont. “He kept him on the outside and gave him a good trip.”

Despite his limited schedule, Stevens has ridden horses this year that have earned $4.8 million. He ranks eighth on the national money list, and is approaching the $200-million mark in career purses.

“I can’t believe that I’ve done this well since coming back,” Stevens said. “Sometimes it takes a while to get your old business back. If somebody had told me when I first came back that I’d be doing all this, I wouldn’t have believed them. I would have told them they’re crazy.”