Bad Day

By Jude T. Feld

My cell phone has been ringing constantly since the Belmont Stakes (G1).

“What happened to Big Brown?”

The answer is, nobody knows. Big Brown, going from an absolute annihilation of his foes in the Preakness (G1) to being eased in the Belmont (G1) is certainly one of the biggest form reversals in the history of Thoroughbred sport.

Theories abound – everything from his feet problems, to the heat, to the moving to the detention barn, to Desormeaux’s ride, to the grueling five-week schedule of the Triple Crown. Some think Karma was a factor because his trainer Rick Dutrow was too cocky while others point to some type of skullduggery.

Big Brown won the Kentucky Derby (G1) and the Preakness (G1) on feet as brittle as a tortilla chip. Any trainer worth his salt knows that the old racing axiom, “no foot, no horse,” is not just a trite expression. Through the hard work of Dutrow, his staff and foot specialist Ian McKinley, the IEAH colorbearer was able to win the garland of roses and the Woodlawn Vase but the gravy train came to an end in New York.

In my long tenure as a racing fan, I never saw a horse win a race with more aplomb than Big Brown’s Preakness (G1). To think that race took anything out of him would be way off the mark. He only ran about a sixteenth of a mile – from the 3/16 pole to the eighth pole in that race – before and after, it was just a strong gallop. There is no way the schedule got to him.

Neither did the heat. It was 96 and sweaty in Elmont with an occasional warm breeze. Big Brown was not any hotter or sweatier than the rest of us. As a matter of fact, he looked pretty darn cool compared to a lot of us.

There was a rumor circling the Belmont paddock on Saturday that Big Brown did not like the detention barn and was going a bit “nutso” in his stall. That could have been a factor. Horses are such creatures of habit. Their clock genes are impeccable. They know when it is 6:30 a.m. and time to go to the track. At 10:00 a.m. they know it is time for their morning feed. At 4:00 p.m. they are looking for supper. Maybe the handsome son of Boundry was pissed off that his schedule was being disturbed. I know Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed did not have to go through the detention barn scenario but if it was the cause of Big Brown’s dismal performance, that is unfortunate.

Did somebody “get to him?” I seriously doubt it. Jeannine Edwards was at Dutrow’s barn reporting every Big Brown bowel movement during the last three weeks on ESPN. I think she probably would have noticed if an unsavory character showed up near his stall with a loaded syringe. This horse had more security than President Bush at a White Sox game in the Cell Block.

Everybody loves to blame the jockey. Kent Desormeaux is a Hall of Fame rider. He cannot raise people from the dead, turn water into wine or feed thousands with two loaves of bread and a few fish. The horses do the running and it was obvious down the backside that Desormeaux was not sitting on the Big Brown of the last few weeks. He was asking Big Brown for a little run and got virtually no response. Desormeaux’s heart had to sink. His mind had to race. It had to feel like running out of gas with one lap to go in the Indy 500 – truly an “Oh shit!” moment.

“That was not Big Brown,” Desormeaux said. “I thought something had to be wrong with him so I pulled him up.”

Some pundits and fans have lambasted him for not riding Big Brown out to the wire, but easing him was a proper and fitting response to a perplexing situation – Take care of the horse who has done so much for you. Who could blame the man for that?

California owner Gary Hallman, master of Winning Ways Stable told me long ago, “Always tell the truth on the racetrack because everybody thinks you’re lying to them anyway.”

If Dutrow had said, “Big Brown has a shot in the Derby, but I’m running because the owners want to and we’ll get a free lunch and a nice box,” people would have accused him of coldwatering them when he waltzed home a winner. Instead, he says his horse is a cinch and they accuse him of being cocky. Even when the horse wins!

If Saturday’s Big Brown was equal to the Kentucky Derby (G1) and Preakness (G1) models, his winning the Belmont (G1) and the Triple Crown was, “a foregone conclusion,” as Dutrow put it, because on paper, nobody was in the same league. It didn’t pan out that way, but not because the trainer was “full of himself,” or “the racing gods were frowning,” or any of the other mystic manure that people banter about to describe a lousy race.

As much as I hate to say it, ESPN’s Hank Goldberg might have explained it best on PTI Monday night.

“Like people, horses have bad days,” Goldeberg said. “Big Brown just picked the worst possible day to have a bad day.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 10:34 am and is filed under Featured Articles. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.