Elmont, N.Y. -- Preakness Stakes winner Tank's Prospect lost a lot more than a horse race in Saturday's Belmont Stakes.
The gutsy bay colt's short but highly successful career was cruelly aborted when he was pulled up near the finish of the 1 1-2 mile final jewel of racing's Tiple Crown with strained suspensory ligaments in his right front ankle.
Shortly after the colt was taken off the Belmont Park track in a horse ambulance, owner Eugene Klein announced he would retire the son of Mr. Prospector to stud.
'We'll get him to the farm where he can lead the good life,' Klein said, after rejecting a suggestion by trainer D. Wayne Lukas that they try to rehabilitate the colt to run in cheap allowance races.
A couple other colts among the eleven-horse field also suffered multiple losses in the race-swept 1-2 by Woody Stephens' coupled entry of gelding Creme Fraiche and colt Stephan's Odyssey. Show-horse Chief's Crown who finished five lengths behind the Stephens entry earned the dubious distinction of being one of the biggest busts in Triple Crown history.
He became just the third horse in racing's most prestigious series to be favored and defeated in all three races. The first two were Correlation in 1954 and My Dad George in 1970.
Chief's Crown was third to Spend A Buck and Stephan's Odyssey in the Kentucky Derby and second in the Preakness. Eternal Prince, who showed in the Preakness, ran himself into total exhaustion while finishing 10th in the Belmont. At 9:00 a.m. Sunday -- several hours after horses usually wakeup -- the Majestic Prince colt was found flat on the floor of his Aqueduct stall stretched out in a mare's foaling position and soundly sleeping off his fatigue.
His poor showing drew an 'I-told-you-so' response by minority owner Brownell Combs II and George Steinbrenner, who had opposed the last-minute decision of majority shareholder Brian Hurst, who is new to racing, to run the Prince in the Belmont rather than in the Ohio Derby later this month. 'Hurst went back to Virginia with his tail between his legs,' Combs said Sunday morning. 'General Patton (Stienbrenner) will take control of the horse.'
The general, Combs said, will now point the speedy colt toward the summer sprint races.
But Tank's Prospect's losses were the most tragic.
Lukas drew critcism in the press for running the colt in the Belmont following his exhausting stretch drive in the Preakness.
The colt ran the middle jewel of the Triple Crown with a bar-shoe to protect a bruise on his right front hoof. After the race, he appeared to be in extreme discomfort; he stood backwards in his stall, gently kneading the sore foot on the soft hay of the floor.
Tank's Prospect was still wearing the bar-shoe in the Belmont, though Lukas said the day before the race that the bruise was no longer a problem.
Klein apparently was not prepared to criticize Lukas.
'We're lucky he's alive,' Klein said. 'It's jolting. He had a chance to be a champion. But that's the breaks, I guess. You have to take the bitter with the better.'
Tank's Prospect, who underwent throat surgery early this spring, ran 14 career races, taking five firsts, two seconds and two thirds. He earned $1,355,645.
