The Bald Eagle

"I've seen Charlie cry only once," Peggy says. "We were sitting at home one day, reminiscing about things, and he started talking about how his mother gave him to his aunt. He said, 'I liked my aunt, but I couldn't understand why I couldn't stay with my mother.' He started to cry. I think that had been bothering him all those years."

The man has been like a kid again these last few weeks, hovering over Sunday Silence, giving him candy, picking clover and tossing it into a corner of the stall. In 1960, after Llangollen's Divine Comedy finished ninth in the Kentucky Derby, Whittingham vowed never again to bring a horse to the Derby unless he had a solid chance to win it. He waited 26 years, until 1986, before hauling Ferdinand to Louisville. He was Whittingham's first Derby winner. Now Whittingham has his first Triple Crown candidate. He is loving every minute of it.

The question, of course, is: Did the Derby and Preakness victories squeeze too much from the lemon? The Bald Eagle doesn't think so. He reckons that, in those final 220 yards of the Belmont, Sunday Silence will at last show the world where Molly put the peaches.