ELMONT, N.Y. – It was a perplexing 24 hours for trainer Jimmy Jerkens, who watched the two best horses in his barn get beat as odds-on favorites in graded stakes over the weekend. On Sunday, the 3-year-old Unified suffered his first defeat from four starts when he ran fifth, 13 1/2 lengths behind winner Donegal Moon, at 1-5 in the Grade 3 Pegasus Stakes at Monmouth Park. That result came the day after the 5-year-old Effinex finished sixth, beaten 6 1/4 lengths by winner Bradester, at 3-5 in the Grade 1 Stephen Foster at Churchill Downs. The good news is that neither horse appears to have come out of his race with a physical issue. The bad news is that Jerkens is now left scrambling to find answers for the poor performances. In the case of Unified, Jerkens thinks it was a case of the horse not handling what Jerkens called a “cuppy” surface. “He’s trained on and run on very fast tracks the three times he’s run,” Jerkens said Monday at Belmont. “The track was awful cuppy yesterday. I’m thinking that had something to do with it. “The only other time I remember it being like that was when Afleet Express won the Pegasus,” Jerkens added, referring to 2010, when Afleet Express ran 1 1/16 miles in 1:45.44. Two starts later, Afleet Express won the Travers. Jerkens chose the Pegasus for Unified to see how he would handle two turns. Unified won his first three starts around one turn, including the Grade 3 Bay Shore and Grade 2 Peter Pan. Jerkens acknowledged that he didn’t learn anything from the Pegasus but said two turns “probably isn’t his thing.” “He’s a free-running horse, and they’re usually better around one turn,” he said. “Maybe with a little more racing he’ll get the hang of it.” If the decision is to keep Unified around one turn, a likely summer goal would be the Grade 1 King’s Bishop, a seven-furlong race at Saratoga on Aug. 27. Meanwhile, Jerkens will have to regroup with Effinex, a huge disappointment in the Stephen Foster, run over the same track he won the Grade 1 Clark Handicap on last fall. Jerkens noted that Effinex had some gate issues but got himself in a decent position down the backside and just didn’t fire. Jerkens said jockey Gary Stevens told him “the gate crew got a little rough with him behind the gate and got him a little unsettled.” “He wasn’t standing good in the gate, and he broke kind of flatfooted,” Jerkens said. “[Stevens] said he got up there easy enough, but he could tell halfway down the backside he was in trouble.” There are no plans set for Effinex’s next race.