The goal was for ESPN 1000 to help Hawthorne Race Course celebrate 100 years of Carey family ownership. Nothing wrong with that. But then two hosts of the station's ''Afternoon Saloon'' show agreed to act like jockeys and race thoroughbreds. Bad idea. After falling from his horse twice Friday, one of the hosts spent the weekend in an intensive-care unit with bleeding on his brain. Talk about a promotional stunt gone wrong.

''I'm banged up, bruised and dizzy,'' Harry Teinowitz said Monday. ''My short-term memory is shot, and I have a crappy week [of healing] ahead of me. But I consider myself lucky.''

The first time Teinowitz fell, he was still in the paddock. The guy who was helping him mount the horse noticed that he was a tad heftier than your average jockey and overcompensated, throwing him over the horse. Teinowitz landed flat on his face.

At that point he probably should have backed out of the stunt. Instead, he remounted and proceeded to race his radio partner John Jurkovic in a one-sixteenth-mile sprint. (Carmen DeFalco, the show's other host, had the good sense to decline the offer to race.) Teinowitz beat Jurkovic, but after crossing the finish line, he couldn't get his horse to slow down.

''I kept yelling, 'Stop, stop, stop,''' Teinowitz said. ''But he wasn't listening. Then he started going straight into a fence. I thought he was going to throw me onto Laramie Avenue, so I started to get off him. The next thing I remember, a medic was shining a light in my face. How dumb am I?''