As trainer Eric Guillot stood in the winner's circle at Saratoga Race Course wearing the smile from the biggest victory of his career, his feet and pants still bore the mud from one of his most distressing moments in racing.

The afternoon ended with Guillot sending out 10-1 shot Moreno ($22) to a surprising victory in the $1.5 million Whitney Handicap. It was about three hours earlier that he endured the devastation of seeing another of his colts owned by Mike Moreno, Sir William Bruce, die of a heart attack shortly after the day's fifth race.

The tragedy happened just a few yards from the grandstand railing, a short distance from the finish line. Guillot rushed onto the track to help tend to the stricken colt, but there was nothing he or the track veterinary staff could do to save the 2-year-old who had just made his first start.

"I was crying when I lost my colt in the fifth race," Guillot said. "He was a very nice colt. I just couldn't understand it."

Afterward, Guillot said he went off by himself for a while and then was consoled by friends. As he started to replay what happened over and over to people, he soon realized he had to switch his focus to Moreno's upcoming race against the leading Horse of the Year candidate, Palace Malice, and Will Take Charge, the horse that beat Moreno by a nose a year earlier in one of the more controversial editions of the Travers.

"You talk about the highs and lows in this game," Guillot said. "Whew. All in one day."

It was indeed a day Guillot will always carry with him, as in the span of just 1:48.05, the time it took Moreno to complete one lap around Saratoga's main track, Guillot found some solace in the richest victory of his checkered career.

Only a year earlier at Saratoga, in the aftermath of Moreno's loss in the Travers, Guillot claimed he saw evidence on a telecast which indicated jockey Luis Saez had used an illegal electrical device to prod Will Take Charge to victory. The charges were never proven to be true, and Guillot was blasted in many corners of the industry for his allegations.

On this day, though, Moreno, who has only one gear, was simply too speedy for Will Take Charge and Palace Malice, who was fourth in that Travers.

Last month, in the longer, mile-and-a-quarter Grade 2 Suburban, Moreno set a quick pace and was overhauled in the stretch by Zivo and had to settle for second. But at a more favorable mile-and-an-eighth distance in the Whitney, he quickly took command under jockey Junior Alvarado and cruised along on the front end with a clear lead through comfortable splits of 47.50 seconds and 1:11.31. This time, he didn't give anyone else a chance.

"Turning for home," Guillot said in his Louisiana drawl, "he's on the lead and I'm hollering, 'Junior! Junior! Do you hear that bell? Do you hear that bell? Someone got taken to school."

Moreno, the namesake of owner Mike Moreno of Southern Equine Stable, maintained his margin of a little more than a length for most of the race, and in the stretch held sway when last year's Preakness runner-up, Itsmyluckyday, took a charge at him. He hit the wire 1 ¼ lengths in front of that challenger. Will Take Charge, the 4-1 second choice, was third and 4 ¼ lengths behind his nemesis from last year's Mid-Summer Derby.

Palace Malice, meanwhile, never fired and finished a disappointing sixth as the 3-5 favorite.

"People say I'm a goofball and I don't know what I'm doing," said Guillot, a native of new Iberia, Louisiana, whose horse snapped an eight-race losing streak that started after a victory in the Dwyer this past July. "I know what I'm doing. Our luck had being going bad. Now we hope this could make the pendulum swing the other way."

The Whitney surely turned the chase for Horse of the Year honors around.

Palace Malice was a clear-cut lead in that race with a 4-for-4 record in 2014, capped by a win in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap on the Belmont Stakes undercard. Now, after a puzzling performance by the 2013 Belmont Stakes winner, there's an opportunity for someone else to step to the front of the line with the important fall races yet to come.

"I don't know what went wrong," jockey John Velazquez said. "He didn't run at all ... he never showed any interest."

As for Guillot, he certainly had a variety of interests and emotions while standing in the winner's circle. After stepping on the scale used to weigh jockeys and seeing that he was 282 pounds, he pronounced that he had "lost some weight" and set out to remedy it.

Shouting over to Moreno (the owner) after Moreno (the horse) had earned $800,000 for his connections, Guillot said, "It sounds like my partner might be buying me a seven-pound steroid lobster at Siro's [restaurant] tonight."

"You can have as many of them as you want," Moreno replied.

"Good. I'll have sodium poisoning tomorrow," he said with a hearty laugh that helped him move past the catastrophic event that had unfolded a mere 30 yards away earlier in the day.

Triumph and tragedy. For Eric Guillot, it was a coupled entry on a day he will never forget.