Sensible horseplayers ordinarily do not waste time on six-horse fields with two standouts, but so what? No one bets every race anyway, and even a Belmont Stakes with zero wagering value still offers plenty - bragging rights and possibly racing's first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.

ELMONT, N.Y. - Funny Cide is the one. He already has won the first two. He will be trying to win all three. He will start from post 4. And there are five who will try to beat him, after a sixth dropped out.

All eyes are on the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner, who will go for the Triple Crown in Saturday's 135th Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park. Funny Cide drew post 4 on Wednesday morning, when post positions for the 1 1/2-mile race were drawn. Five were entered against him, including Empire Maker, who has split two previous decisions with Funny Cide.

ELMONT, N.Y. - The conservative nature of trainer Barclay Tagg helps explain, in part, why it has taken three decades for the 65-year-old trainer to make his first trip down the Triple Crown trail. That same ideology may also explain why Tagg now stands 12 furlongs away from racing immortality.

Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Funny Cide will face a field of five challengers as he tries to become racing's 12th Triple Crown winner in Saturday's 135th running of the Belmont Stakes. Funny Cide drew post four and has been installed as the even money morning-line favorite. Regular rider Jose Santos will be aboard.

Funny Cide's primary challenger is expected to be Empire Maker who drew the rail and is 6-5 second choice in the morning line.

Best Minister was not entered on Wednesday in Saturday's $1 million Belmont Stakes after an endoscopic examination revealed the presence of mucous.

Trainer Ken McPeek said that Best Minister, who needed to be supplemented at the cost of $100,000 to run in the Belmont, plus $20,000 in entry and starting fees, didn't finish his Tuesday night dinner and coughed three times on Wednesday morning.

"We figured we would scope him and he didn't scope clean," McPeek said. "Timing is everything in this game and unfortunately this was poor timing."

ELMONT, N.Y. - Both Funny Cide and Barclay Tagg pulled a fast one Tuesday morning.

Funny Cide, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, who will seek to win the Triple Crown in Saturday's 135th Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park, rocketed through his final workout, blazing five furlongs in 57.82 seconds. It was the fastest of 49 works at the distance, and one of only three that were faster than one minute.

ELMONT, N.Y. - Go ahead and call Christophe Clement a turf trainer, he doesn't mind. Just to have gained any label at the age of 37 is acknowledgement enough of what Clement has achieved in his relatively brief career.

Since taking out his trainer's license in North America in 1991, Clement has won 567 races, including 86 graded stakes, the most recent coming in last Saturday's Grade 2 Sheepshead Bay Handicap at Belmont Park. Seventy-one percent of his starters have been on turf, a surface on which Clement has recorded all five of his career Grade 1 victories.

ELMONT, N.Y. - Funny Cide, who will seek a sweep of the Triple Crown in Saturday's Belmont Stakes, flew through his final work early Tuesday morning, zipping through five furlongs in 57.82 seconds according to Belmont Park's clockers. Daily Racing Form timed the work in 57.06 seconds.

Funny Cide came on the track at 5:25 a.m., just as the sun was rising in the northeast horizon. He cantered quickly the wrong way back to the 6 1/2-furlong pole, then turned around and moved toward the half-mile pole, from where his work began.

ELMONT, N.Y. - No horse has won the Triple Crown in 25 years, a streak Funny Cide will try to end in Saturday's 135th Belmont Stakes. He is the eighth horse since Affirmed to win both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, the fifth in the last eight years. None - not Pleasant Colony, Alysheba, Sunday Silence, Silver Charm, Real Quiet, Charismatic, nor War Emblem - could complete the sweep. The Herculean task awaiting Funny Cide is something his trainer, Barclay Tagg, has been reminded of repeatedly.

ELMONT, N.Y. - Think back to those days of old, a little more than a month ago, when everybody - everybody - knew that by the week of the Belmont Stakes, there was going to be a horse going for the Triple Crown.

It just wasn't supposed to be Funny Cide.