By ED GOLDEN

The Desormeaux Bashers crawled out from under their rocks before Saturday’s Belmont Stakes was official, just after the photo showed Victory Gallop the winner.

Before he got back to the jocks’ room, even Kent had second-guessed himself, right there in front of ABC’s epidermis-probing television cameras. "Quite frankly," said Desormeaux (known as "Mo" to intimates), "I might have moved prematurely. I should have waited a little longer, because I know he’ll gawk and look around. Being beat at the finish line hurts a lot." AND GAWK AND look around Real Quiet did, enough to keep him from winning the Belmont Stakes by the thrust of a nose. With the inopportune bob, 4-5 favorite Real Quiet missed becoming racing’s 12th Triple Crown winner and owner Mike Pegram, trainer Bob Baffert and jockey Kent Desormeaux missed a $5 million bonus given by Visa to a Triple Crown winner.

Victory Gallop will become merely a trivia answer to the 1998 Belmont Stakes. The prevailing questions to one of the sports most memorable moments will be: Did Kent Desormeaux move too soon; and, would Real Quiet have been disqualified for bumping Victory Gallop near the wire, had Real Quiet finished first?

If Desormeaux did move too early, it was the same move he made in winning the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. And nobody complained then. If anything, Desormeaux rode a perfect race in the Belmont. He rode exactly as he did in the Preakness. Only difference was, the Belmont was 5/16 of a mile longer.

DESORMEAUX kept Real Quiet out of traffic into the first turn, then eased the vastly improved colt outside of horses and into the clear down the backstretch. Just as he had in the Derby and the Preakness, Real Quiet made his move turning for home. From there, it was just a matter of just how much he would win by. Or so it seemed.

When Real Quiet had a four-length lead approaching the eighth pole, Desormeaux had to be asking himself, "Where is that finish line?"

It didn’t come soon enough and Real Quiet didn’t get the bob. He was in front before and after the wire, but Victory Gallop and Gary Stevens got the bob.

On the morning after, as Desormeaux was flying back to ride Fiji to victory in Sunday’s Gamely Handicap at Hollywood Park, Baffert was not about to criticize his rider, whose career he has resurrected.

"I’LL SURVIVE," a subdued but philosophical Baffert said of the crushing defeat that denied him racing immortality. "I just told Kent not to worry about it. He got beat. He rode a great race and he just got beat. That’s all you can do. It just didn’t happen. The horse got out there (to the big lead) and he was getting a little tired. He was looking around and he didn’t have a target to run at.

"Victory Gallop came up to him and he tried to dig back in again. It was just a bad-luck bob of the head, that’s all it was. Look at Dubai. We got the lucky break there (winning the $4 million Dubai World Cup by a nose with Silver Charm). Once in a while, you’re going to lose those, so what are you going to do?"

FOR ONE THING, he’ll continue to use Desormeaux.

"I’m still going to ride him," Baffert said. "There’s nothing he could have done any different. About the only thing he could have done was get off and led him the last part. Maybe you could say he should have stayed there with Victory Gallop, but he’s a one-run horse. Real Quiet just cruises. He doesn’t pour it on. He’s just steady. That’s the way he runs. It’s not like he has that kick. He made that move turning for home and he just got beat. When it’s that close, there’s always room to say ‘he did this’ or ‘he did that.’ If he would have won, it would have been a great ride, because he kicked away early and that would have been the reason he won it, just like he did in the Derby and the Preakness."

Even though Desormeaux admitted the defeat was "somewhat" his fault, that it was "a tough pill to swallow" and that he "would like to do it over," Baffert exonerated him.

"It’s not Kent’s fault," Baffert said. "If he waited, the horse wouldn’t have had that punch."

Stevens, too, who was in Desormeaux’s spot last year when Silver Charm missed the Triple Crown by three-quarters of length, commiserated with his cohort.

"When you leave the jocks’ room for a race like this, the weight of the world is on you," Stevens said. "There is more pressure on you than you can imagine, and you don’t realize that until after the fact. Kent Desormeaux has nothing to be ashamed of. He did what he thought was right at the time. That’s what we get paid for. He’s a champion, a future Hall of Famer."

AND SO IT came to pass that Baffert did not knock his jockey and did not lament loss of the $5 million Visa bonus, not to mention Belmont’s winner’s share of $600,000.

"The main thing is, he won the Kentucky Derby," Baffert said. "That’s all that matters to me. The Derby, that’s the championship."

Still, it’s easy to lump Desormeaux’s tactics with Lasorda’s decision to let Niedenfuer pitch to Jack Clark; Buckner’s boot against the Mets; and Shoemaker’s misjudging the finish line in the1957 Derby on Gallant Man.

Shoe’s faux pax has pretty much been forgotten, so maybe Desormeaux’s ride will pass with time, too. But don’t bet on it.

IN ANY SOLITARY moment, it can come back to haunt him.

Deserved or not, Kent Desormeaux will always remember flirting with eternal fame, and how close he came to an indelible marriage for the ages.

Every day of his life.

THE HOMESTRETCH: Baffert said Real Quiet was "back home at Churchill Downs" Sunday morning. "He came out of the race good and I’ll give him a few days off before deciding what’s next. He’s pretty fresh and I could run him anywhere. He could run in three weeks." Baffert said Silver Charm is "doing great" as he prepares for Saturday’s Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs, en route to a possible showdown with Skip Away, perhaps in the Del Mar Classic on Aug. 15. "I think Sonny Hine has quieted down a little bit," Baffert said of Skip Away’s trainer, who called Baffert a "coward" for avoiding Skip Away to date. "There’s no telling when we’ll meet," Baffert said. "As soon as he (Hine) knows I’m not running somewhere for sure, that’s when he starts taunting me.". . . Chris McCarron consoled Desormeaux in the jocks’ room after the Belmont. "He was ever the professional," Desormeaux said of the Hall of Fame veteran who won the Belmont last year on Touch Gold. "He pulled me aside and told me, ‘You’re going to feel horrible for the next week. Don’t worry about it. It is absolutely just another horse race, and that I was still a champion, don’t worry about it.’" . . . Attendance of 80,162 was the second largest in Belmont history, since Canonero II failed in his Triple Crown bid in 1971 before 82,694. The commingled handle of $50,168,550 was a New York record, surpassing the $46,719,629 set on last year’s Belmont Stakes day. The on-track handle of $9,351,731 was the second-largest in Belmont Park history and a record for Belmont Stakes day . . . Skip Away, who set a Suffolk Downs track record of 1:47^1/5 for 1^1/8 miles in winning the Massachusetts Handicap under 130 pounds, is scheduled to make his next start at equal weights of 124 pounds against Gentlemen in the $1 million Hollywood Gold Cup on June 28. Skip Away earned $500,000 in the Masscap. His bankroll is $8.3 million, approximately $1.7 million away from Cigar’s record lifetime total of $9,999,815.