Michael Matz

IT WILL BE 6 years next spring when our string of Triple Crown race winners ended in the Preakness with Barbaro's devastating injury. From the 2004 Kentucky Derby through the 2006 Derby, local horses won five of the seven Triple Crown races and lost the other two by 1 length. That was two each of Derby and Preakness and one Belmont Stakes for Smarty Jones, Afleet Alex and Barbaro. It began with no warning and ended the same way. A bit after 5:15 tomorrow afternoon on the western tip of Long Island, the next colt that could get Philly to the Derby runs in the Champagne Stakes at Belmont Park.

Barbaro's competition at the Preakness Stakes dropped a notch yesterday when the trainer for Arkansas Derby champion Lawyer Ron said the 12th-place finisher in the Kentucky Derby was unlikely to make the May 20 race. The two horses expected to be Barbaro's chief competition, Brother Derek and Sweetnorthernsaint, still are in. At this point, those are the only two Kentucky Derby horses looking to join the Derby winner at Pimlico Race Course. "Looks like we probably aren't going to come," Lawyer Ron's trainer, Bob Holthus, said in a statement put out by Pimlico.

Even though Joannah Hall Glass of Chatham, Pa., is a veteran National Horse Show competitor, she was as nervous as a beginner yesterday when she entered the ring for her turn in the lady's hunter class. Glass was anxious because she was in a position to achieve the major goal of her riding career. After winning the lady's hunter sidesaddle class two years in a row, she had only to win it a third time to retire the Peace and Plenty Farm Challenge Trophy. "I can't remember ever being so nervous," she said, going to the ring to show her 16-year-old mare, Closing The Ring.

Nina Montross of Bedford Hills, N.Y., rode Paradysz Farm's Indigo to win both Pony Jumper classes Sunday and finished second in the division's first class Saturday to win the championship at the Devon Horse Show and Country Fair with 31 points. In the $2,500 NAL Pony Jumpers on Sunday evening, Montross beat five ponies that had jumped without a fault in the first round of 20 ponies with a clean round in 24.912 seconds. Alex Matz, who placed fourth in the NAL Pony Jumpers on Wiseguy, was awarded the Pony Jumper Style Award.

BALTIMORE - Chester County trainer Michael Matz, whose Teeth of the Dog finished fourth in the Preakness, learned a thing or two about expectations while guiding Barbaro. With Bodemeister, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness favorite who finished a close second in both races, headed to the sideline for the Belmont, Matz's bay colt, Union Rags, might provide the toughest competition for I'll Have Another. Union Rags will also be fresh, having skipped the Preakness after a rough trip in the Derby resulted in a seventh-place finish.

Michael Matz, trainer of Barbaro, the Kentucky Derby winner, extended an invitation to Dan Hendricks yesterday to visit his private barn at the Fair Hill Training Center. Matz offered a tour of the bucolic equine center, about an hour away from Pimlico in Elkton, Md. Besides Barbaro, Matz has 50 horses stabled there. Hendricks trains Brother Derek, who finished in a dead heat for fourth in the Derby and is the 3-1 second choice in the Preakness. He is both curious and apprehensive about visiting the farm.

When Michael Dan Mendell entered the arena for the stadium-jumping phase of the Radnor Hunt International Three Day Event yesterday, he had a strong feeling of deja vu. Mendell, of Upperville, Va., was in the same position two weeks ago at the Morven Park (Va.) Advanced Horse Trials Championship, leading the field with one test left. As he was yesterday, the 28-year-old rider was last to jump. He put in a tense ride aboard his 15-year-old English thoroughbred, Hatton Springs, knocking down two fences.

UNION RAGS HAS been relaxing in South Florida since the day after his dramatic late run in the Nov. 5 Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Churchill Downs fell just short. The first loss of his career did not change the colt's status as the early favorite for the 2012 Kentucky Derby. While Union Rags gets some rest and time to grow, trainer Michael Matz has mapped out a two-race plan to get the colt back to Churchill for the May 5 Derby. Matz is looking at the $400,000 Fountain of Youth Stakes on Sunday, Feb. 26, and the $1 million Florida Derby on Saturday, March 31. Both races are at Gulfstream Park.

Gem Twist, named best horse in the 1991 World Championships, lived up to his reputation last night by winning the $60,000 Grand Prix of Devon with Olympic veteran Greg Best in the irons. But second-place finisher Michael Matz of Collegeville, Pa., maintained the top spot in the quest to represent the United States equestrian team in the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Matz was one of six riders to complete the course without jumping penalties in last week's selection trial at the equestrian team headquarters in Gladstone, N.J. In the Grand Prix of Devon, another Olympic selection trial, Matz put in the best performance of that group of six riders, scoring four faults on Sale Johnson's Heisman, a German-bred horse.

Michael Matz, the world-class horseman from Collegeville, Pa., goes into the show-jumping competition tomorrow hoping to win his first Olympic medal. He will give it his best shot. But if he doesn't win, he says, it won't be the end of the world. Matz knows what it's like to feel that it's the end of the world. He was on United Airlines Flight 232 the afternoon of July 19, 1989, when the crippled DC-10 skidded and tumbled through a cornfield just short of the airport in Sioux City, Iowa.