It is a hoary maxim in thoroughbred horse racing: Death is part of this game.

"This part right here, I'm going to tell you, this isn't part of the game," Jones said. "You're not supposed to be through with the race and a quarter-mile after the race, your horse does not come back to you. That's not part of the game."

Jones said he was convinced that Eight Belles - the Delaware Park-based filly who had just run to a superb second-place finish behind sensational winner Big Brown in Saturday's Kentucky Derby - never knew she was in trouble before she went down with fractures in both of her lower front legs.

"It's not like the horse was trying to run through pain," said Jones, a cattle farmer turned horse trainer originally from Hopkinsville, Ky. "The first thing they do is start pinning their ears. Whenever they're in discomfort, they're going to pin their ears, and her ears were up, so the horse never had a clue anything was going on."

Jones said he knew he never would have a detailed explanation for what happened.

"It's not like she broke one and got to hopping and then broke the other one," Jones said. "They said they broke just at the same stride. It's unheard of."

Jones knew that jockey Gabriel Saez had described how Eight Belles had started "galloping funny" after the wire.

"I'll guarantee I know what he means," Jones said, describing how Eight Belles regularly "cross-fired," cantering with one lead in her front leg and the opposite lead with her back leg.

"Any time you pick her head up and pull on her, when she's ready to switch leads, she'd go to cross-fire, and I know that's what he felt. I'll just have to show him the pictures whenever I get them or get the film slowed down. . . . She'd be on the left lead in the front, right lead behind. She used to do that in the morning for the rider and they knew it, and then whenever I started riding her, I realized what she was doing."

The trainer continued his explanation of the filly's cross-firing, saying, "She could do it faster than any horse I've been on in my life. A lot of horses will do it, especially young horses. But they're so uncomfortable, they learn not to do it, because it's hard to do. She could do it slick. This one, I knew she was so talented because horses can't do that and run very fast, and she could."

Jones said he was sure that's what Saez felt.

"Now, did that lead to her breaking them?" Jones said. "Don't know. That, I'll never know. But it's just unfortunate."

Jones said Kentucky veterinarians had looked at his horse and all the other Derby horses a lot in the days before the race.

"This mare had no issues, believe me," Jones said. "It's not like we ever had her in ice. We've never run her in bandages. We've never stood her in a bandage. She's just never had an issue. If she had it going in, she wouldn't have run the race that she did."

But Jones said he understood that microfractures could have occurred during the race, as Eight Belles tried to chase down Big Brown.

"That's what you have to think," Jones said.

There will be an autopsy, Jones said, and then owner Rick Porter of Wilmington had requested that the horse be cremated.

A car driving by at 7:30 a.m. stopped near Jones. The driver simply said, "Sorry, Larry."

The driver was Michael Matz of Chester County.

"Mike, I know you know what it's like. Thank you," Jones told the trainer of 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro, who broke down two weeks later in the Preakness and was euthanized eight months later.

Matz's 4-year-old colt Chelokee dislocated his front right leg in a race Friday at Churchill Downs.

"How is yours doing?" Jones asked.

"He's doing good," Matz said. "They're going to operate tomorrow. He looks real good."

Before driving ahead to his own barn, Matz said again, "I'm really sorry."

Jones said he was at the barn early yesterday since sleep did not come easily anyway.

"We've got to start getting back in the routine," Jones said. "Proud Spell was looking for us to get here."

His two fillies had turned out to be the two best 3-year-olds in the country, but Jones was not focusing on that. This could have been the triumphant weekend of his career. Porter and Jones had come in second in last year's Derby with Hard Spun, and got the briefest of exultation for getting second again this year. Plus, Jones trained Proud Spell to a five-length victory in the biggest race of the year for 3-year-old fillies.

"I think she realized something," Jones said of Proud Spell. "I don't know if she's picking up on all of our attitudes yesterday or what. She went to the back of her stall and wouldn't come back out. I don't know if she could sense [Eight Belles] was gone or not."