Just when it looked as if the sport could celebrate another bid to end the Triple Crown drought, Curlin came of age and ran down Street Sense to win the Preakness in a record-tying time

	Derby winner Street Sense (right) will probably skip the Belmont after Curlin passed him in the final stride last Saturday. Bill Frakes/SI

A lesson confirmed: Triple Crown dreams are best expressed with caution. Street Sense came to last Saturday's Preakness after a dominant Kentucky Derby victory so resonant that his guileless Cajun jockey, Calvin Borel, was invited to a state dinner at the White House. His trainer, Texan Carl Nafzger, was praised effusively for his skillful conditioning. The racing game again readied itself for history. "If he can get by this one, he looks like he can run all day in the Belmont," said Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, promisingly."

By scarcely the length of a colt's head, those expectations were cast aside. A different Cajun jockey won the Preakness, and a different Texan trainer as well. Five co-owners were rewarded for a deal hammered out while the rest of the country watched Super Bowl XLI, and racing's Triple Crown drought was extended to 29 years, since Affirmed edged Alydar.

An eighth of a mile from the finish of the Preakness, Street Sense was clear by 1 1/2 lengths as a record crowd of 121,263 brought itself to full throat in a cool drizzle at Pimlico Race Course. "You take a lead in a horse race, you're expected to finish it off," said Nafzger afterward. Instead, it was the precocious Curlin, the third-place finisher in the Derby in just his fourth career start, who ran down Street Sense for rider Robby Albarado and won at the wire. It was the closest Preakness finish in a decade, and Curlin's time of 1:53.46 matched the Preakness record set by Tank's Prospect (1985) and Louis Quatorze (1996).

Curlin's victory finished off a breakneck rush that began on Feb. 3, when the colt, who had sat out his 2-year-old season with sore shins, won the first race of his life, at Gulfstream Park, by 12 3/4 lengths. "We had 25 offers to sell him, and we had to make a business decision," says Bill Gallion, who with fellow Kentucky lawyer Shirley Cunningham Jr. make up Midnight Cry Stable. They had bought Kentucky-bred Curlin for $57,000 at the Keeneland yearling sale.