Now witness the big bay’s parade under tack and rider Javier Castellano in his maroon and white silks. The jockey sits still as a “statue in the saddle,” which is how the race caller Tom Durkin would describe him minutes later in the stretch. Bernardini is walking with the bearing of a proud creature that God made only one of.

There are athletes that portray greatness by their very being, and Bernardini, like Jordan or Gretsky or Tiger, seems to be one of them. 

The Darley Stable star loped home without being stung by the whip and trotted back to the unsaddling area as if his exertion was light exercise.  He assumed the pace setter’s position from a very fast Minister’s Bid from the gate, cut fractions that were decent while a length on the lead, and then separated himself from the competition like a mouse from a cat. Is this a horse for the ages?

Regardless, Bernardini could be a career maker, if not an icon.

Before the Brooklyn-born Albertrani served a seven-year sentence in Dubai as an assistant to Saeed bin Suroor, the trainer for Sheikh Mohammed and Godolphin Racing, he worked under Bill Mott and helped in the development of Cigar.

Castellano was the rider of Ghostzapper, but Ghostzapper arrived and departed as quietly as Casper. Sure, he was Horse of the Year in 2004 and won the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Lone Star, but in the fashion of Point Given or Fusiachi Pegasus, he had the charisma of lox.

Conversely, both Bernardini and Barbaro seem to be bona fide rock stars.

“There was something about Barbaro that made me take notice the minute he walked on the track,” Sharon Castro, a photographer and former hotwalker, said on Saratoga’s backstretch the morning after Bernardini won.  “I’m not ready to say that about Bernardini,” she said, refusing to concede anything to ascendancy.

Nevertheless, Castro and others are convinced more than ever that, because of Barbaro’s injury, racing is without a rivalry that few would have disregarded.  As Jean-Paul Sartre said about soccer, “The game is complicated by the other team,” and in racing, the competition is glorified by the other horse.

“Bernardini today made his win in the Preakness look all that more impressive,” said Charlie Hayward, NYRA’s CEO, who’s a horseplayer at heart.

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Flying on the hardwood, racing on the rink, getting physical on the gridiron, and much more. more photos

“I guess there was a lot of doubt in people’s minds with the Preakness victory, “Abertrani chimed in. “I wasn’t surprised,” the trainer said about the validation his star received for winning the Jim Dandy.

Attempting to reconstruct history, of course, is as futile as trying to grow shorter.  Unless horses are cloned, Bernardini and Barbaro will never meet again, and the “what ifs” will go on. But given time, and a few more impressive victories, and Bernardini, not Barbaro, will be Horse of the Year.

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