Performance Of The Week

Even the winning jockey, Edgar Prado, seemed disappointed. "I'm very sorry that happened," he said after his horse, BIRDSTONE, beat Smarty Jones in the Belmont Stakes by a length, "but I had to do my job." Thoroughbred racing fans should be accustomed by now to that sick feeling, with six horses in the past eight years having lost the Triple Crown in the final stretch, but Smarty Jones, the country's sweetheart, was supposed to be different. There was one group, however, that went home happy: the folks who bet on Birdstone, whose odds were 36 to 1.