Plenty of Heartbreak Over Barbaro for Fans at Pimlico

BALTIMORE, May 20 -- Frank Nugent never misses the Preakness. Just as he has every year since 1972, he drove down from Drexel Hills, Pa.

But Saturday, he said, was the worst. The crowd favorite and Kentucky Derby winner, Barbaro, broke his right rear ankle and a lot of hearts.

"I couldn't believe it," Nugent said. "Such a powerful animal. When it happened, I stopped watching the race and put my eyes on Barbaro. He looked like a sure Triple Crown winner before the race."

Steven King, an usher in the stands, said he saw the horse wobble and "that's when I knew something was wrong."

Fans gathered near Barbaro's stall and watched as trainer Michael Matz left to meet the horse at an equine hospital in Pennsylvania. "We're praying for you, Michael," several shouted.

Napravnik Impresses

For 18-year-old apprentice jockey Anna Rose Napravnik, Preakness Day marked her coming-out party on the national stage. If the racing world wasn't aware of the savant tearing up the Maryland racing circuit before Saturday, it is now.

Napravnik, who lives in Laurel, has towered over the Pimlico jockey standings this spring, winning with 28 percent of her mounts. She came right out of the gate Saturday with some of the finest riders in the world in town for the rich Preakness card, and won the first race of the day on sprinter Roth Ticket for trainer Howard Wolfendale.

Four races later she struck again, picking up the fifth stakes win of her career, guiding 7-1 shot My Lord from last to first in the $100,000 Baltimore Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint.

The ride was typical of Napravnik, intuitive and authoritative. My Lord appeared outrun early in the five-furlong race as the leaders sped through an opening half-mile in 45.24 seconds. By the time they reached the turn, however, the 7-year-old gelding trained by Ann Merryman gathered momentum, and Napravnik perfectly timed her stretch drive to pass heavy favorite Southern Missile inside the eighth pole and win by three-quarters of a length.

With her entire family in attendance, Napravnik was elated.

"It feels terrific winning on Preakness Day," she said. "I knew my agent would get me on a million horses today, but I didn't realize they'd be this live."

Napravnik rode in 11 of the 13 races on the card, sitting out the Preakness and the Hirsch Jacobs. She wasn't through after the stakes victory. Riding Celtic Innis in the Grade III $200,000 Maryland Breeders' Cup Sprint Handicap, Napravnik stalked the pace set by Kazoo and then pounced from the outside on the turn. She hemmed the charging Gaff inside and missed beating favorite Friendly Island by three-quarters of a length.