Baltimore ? Carl Nafzger stood alone outside the stakes barn at Pimlico Race Course, oblivious to the raindrops falling on his gray hair and maroon suit jacket.

The trainer of Street Sense had every right to be disappointed, maybe even bitter. His horse had taken the lead down the stretch in Saturday’s Preakness Stakes before being overtaken at the wire by Curlin.

By the length of a horse’s head, Nafzger’s bid to win the Triple Crown was over.

At first he called the defeat “heartbreaking,” lamenting, “We had Curlin. We should have never let him come back and get us.”

About 30 minutes later, he had calmed down.

“My horse ran great. I got outran. That’s horse racing,” Nafzger said. “If you can’t enjoy watching a $5,000 claimer give you 110 percent, you shouldn’t be in the horse business.”

Then he paused for an instant and added, “Maybe he gave me 105. But Curlin (gave) 110. You have to enjoy watching Curlin run.”

The Derby crowd certainly enjoyed watching Street Sense run, especially his roaring move from next-to-last in a 20-horse field to win by 21â4 lengths.

And, for a time, it looked as if he’d have this race wrapped up, too, with jockey Calvin Borel moving him from eighth to first at the top of the stretch.

But Curlin summoned up one last surge and won the race on the final stride.

“I thought it was all over. When you open up a lead and have two lengths of daylight, you’re supposed to win the horse race,” Nafzger said. “Other horses wouldn’t have never tried that last kick like Curlin did.”

Borel said he thought it was over “when I got by Hard Spun turning for home. He just got to gawking 40 yards from home and got outrun.”

Perhaps therein lies Street Sense’s lone flaw: the failure to realize that a race isn’t over until the winner crosses the finish line.

“When my horse gets to the lead, he’s just sort of happy. He won’t quit running, but he’s not intense,” Nafzger said.