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lect racing's richest prize. It was the 14th straight victory by the extraordinary 6-year-old bay, but it also was by far the narrowest of that streak. Soul of the Matter closed from the outside to run eye to eye with Cigar with just three-sixteenths of a mile to go, and the jockey Jerry Bailey had to ask the horse for more than he had ever asked before. The triumph left Cigar just 2 victories short of the legendary Citation's record of 16 consecutive victories, vaulted Cigar past Alysheba as racing's career leading money winner and swelled his international reputation. Still, Cigar's trainer, Bill Mott, said his horse was not at his best, underscoring just how risky and unusual an undertaking the race was for such a valuable horse. Mott said that as Cigar and Soul of the Matter thundered side by side down the stretch, he was counting the 11 training days that Cigar had lost after sustaining a bruised right foot only five weeks ago. "Tonight you saw him reach down and find something he hasn't had to use every time he's run," Mott said. "It was just sure grit, and it's really good to see that he's got it in him." Cigar, who started from the eighth position in an 11-horse field, was the last one loaded into the starting gate for the mile-and-a-quarter race on the sandy Nad al-Sheba track. He slipped on the way out, leaving him in the middle of the pack with five furlongs to go. Cigar took the lead from the pacesetter, L'Carriere, on the final turn into the long three-furlong homestretch, but then Burt Bacharach's Soul of the Matter roared from last place to make the final challenge. "I was a bit worried," said Bailey, who wore the red, white and blue silks of Cigar's owner, Allen Paulson. But Bailey responded with hands and whip to urge Cigar first a nose, then a shoulder and finally a half-length ahead in a race that the jockey, speaking of his mount, said was "not his best performance, but it was his best effort." Gary Stevens, who rode Soul of the Matter, said he believed his horse had actually nosed in front for a moment. "I think it's been quite some time since anybody's got past Cigar," he said. But Bailey, North America's 1995 Jockey of the Year riding the 1995 Horse of the Year, said, "Nobody was going by me, even if we went around again." http://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/28/sports/horse-racing-cigar-hangs-on-in-desert-sand-to-win-14th-in-row.html?gwh=BA9997423373D30DD0189C68208764FF