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 2 1/4 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. After the colt passed the field and saw nothing but empty space ahead, he apparently let up.

“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. “And Curlin ran an unbelievable perfect race today.”

Especially over the final 100 yards.

“It was almost a match race at the end. One champion and another potential champion,” one of Curlin’s owners, Jess Jackson, said. “Street Sense deserves a lot of credit.”

Maybe so, but that won’t get him a Triple Crown.

“You always want to go to the ultimate, but at the same time there are a lot of things more important in life than the Triple Crown,” Nafzger said. “I’m just happy to have a horse like this. Look, I’ve got a horse that broke the Breeders’ Cup juvenile jinx, won the Kentucky Derby and never been beaten by more than a nose in his last five outs.”

Asked about going to the Belmont Stakes in three weeks, Nafzger said, “What’s the point?”

But he can’t wait for Street Sense and Curlin to meet again. Street Sense has finished in the money in every one of his nine career races, and Curlin has won four of five.

“The only guy to beat Curlin is me,” Nafzger said. “Curlin’s going to get better as he gets experience. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens down the road. I think we’ve got a great challenge going.

“Curlin ran a heck of a race today,” Nafzger said, “but I’ll beat him next time.”

AP-ES-05-19-07 2114EDT