Published: June 09, 2008 02:04 pm      

What happened to Big Brown?

Big Brown’s stunning last-place finish as the 1-to-4 favorite in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes left the two-legged members of his team scrambling for answers. In fact, the people associated with the previously undefeated colt did more running in their quest for a reason for his dismal effort than Big Brown did during the race.

The obvious answer for his effort -- or lack of one -- would have been his troublesome left front hoof, which had developed a quarter crack following his easy victory in the Preakness three weeks earlier. Big Brown ran with an acrylic patch on the crack to hold the foot together, and surely that patch had come loose.

But the patch and the hoof were fine. In fact, the undisputed leader or this year’s 3-year-old division and the toast of thoroughbred racing heading into Saturday’s race appeared to be fine everywhere.

Big Brown had no sign of a limp, and an endoscopic examination immediately after the race eliminated another obvious solution to the mystery -- internal bleeding. Members of his ownership group and trainer Rick Dutrow (who had guaranteed a victory) told reporters there HAD to be a reason for their stable star’s performance. They just hadn’t found it yet, but stay tuned...it has to be there somewhere, they promised.

The one thing nobody associated with Big Brown wanted to admit after the race was that Saturday simply wasn’t his day.

Despite his foot problems (something that also plagued his sire, Boundary, during his racing career), Big Brown appeared to have the stars perfectly aligned to become the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years and to join Seattle Slew (1977) as the only horses to sweep the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes undefeated. Ironically, a foot problem had eliminated Casino Drive, the Japanese-based colt who appeared to be Big Brown’s most serious rival, when that colt -- unbeaten in two starts and a half-brother to the last two Belmont winners -- returned dead lame earlier in the day after a pre-race gallop and was scratched with what was reported to be a bruised left hind foot.

With Casino Drive out of the race, the Belmont field was reduced to Big Brown -- a perfect 5-for-5 in his career with an average winning margin of almost eight lengths per race -- and eight apparent pretenders who among them totalled just two career stakes victories and only one Grade I win (by Tale of Ekati, who had won the Wood Memorial in the slowest running of that race in years).

Nobody seemed to care that Big Brown was the only member of the Belmont field who had taken each of the three steps on the grueling Triple Crown road. His lack of a published workout for more than two weeks after the Preakness and his rankness when he finally breezed five furlongs with his left front hoof held together by staples last Tuesday was surely no cause for concern. After all, they reasoned, this was a super horse.

And, when the usual docile colt threw an absolute fit in his stall at the Belmont Park receiving barn after he was transferred there almost five hours before Saturday’s race to await his date with history, the ESPN commentators covering the race expressed concern over the change in his personality. Like everybody else, though, they figured it wasn’t real cause for concern.

After all, this WAS Big Brown, and surely a little pre-race tantrum wasn’t enough to deny the racing world the hero it had been waiting for since Affirmed edged Alydar to complete the last Triple Crown sweep in 1978.

On the track before the race, Big Brown developed “kidney sweat” between his hind legs, which is usually a sign of nervousness and probably the result of record high temperatures that hit the New York City area Saturday. Obviously that could be written off to the heat, expect for the fact that none of his rivals appeared to affected the same way.

When the field broke from the gate, Big Brown had a tell-tale white froth between his back legs, a stark contrast to his glistening brown coat. Despite the heat, though, the other horses in the race appeared to be relatively dry in the same area.

Veteran jockey Kent Desormeaux, who had kept Big Brown wide and out of traffic trouble in the Derby and Preakness, found himself on the rail and trapped behind horses heading in the first turn Saturday. The favorite refused to settle and instead ran up on the heels of the leaders, forcing Desormeaux to steady him repeatedly before he finally moved him to the outside and into the clear with just over a mile to run.

Belmont announcer Tom Durkin seemed to be trying to reassure the huge crowd (estimated at about 120,000) for the next half-mile or so, relating in a calming voice how Big Brown was in a perfect position behind longshot pacesetter Da’ Tara -- a 38-to-1 outsider who had been beaten 23 lengths by Big Brown in the Florida Derby in March and had obiously been entered by trainer Nick Zito to ensure a fast-pace for his real Belmont hope, the stretch-running Tale of Ekati.

But when the field reached the sweeping final turn on the massive mile and one-half Belmont strip, Durkin had to tell everybody what most already knew -- Da’ Tara was drawing clear and Big Brown was going nowhere.

By the time the leader reached the top of the stretch, the closers were sweeping past Big Brown on the outside, and Desormeaux did the smart thing, easing his obviously beaten mount as Da’ Tara continued on to one of the biggest upsets in Triple Crown history. The favorite galloped out to the wire in no apparent distress -- a marked contrast to what his many supporters both at Belmont and at off-track betting outlets throughout the country were feeling.

In the aftermath of Big Brown’s last-place finish (the first ever for a horse who had won the Derby and Preakness), everybody had the same question: WHY?

The truth is that there probably wasn’t one answer. Instead, the colt’s failure Saturday was due to a combination of factors, with the crack on his left front hoof probably pretty far down the list.

As I mentioned in Thursday’s preview of the race, Big Brown had a chance to “trip over his pedigree” in the Belmont. Bred more for speed than distance, he figured to need something close to a perfect trip to handle the mile and a half, even with the apparent mediocrity of his rivals.

The heat was something else Big Brown had never had to deal with during his winter in Florida and his races in Kentucky and Maryland earlier this spring, and the oppressive temperature was amplified by the fact that it came at the end of the most grueling five weeks (the time between the Derby and Belmont) any horse has to endure in his career.

Big Brown’s trip was anything but perfect, and his agitation in the hours and minutes leading up to the race only made Desormeaux’s job that much tougher.

Dutrow, whose checkered past was almost as big a story during the Triple Crown as Big Brown’s victories, admitted he had been giving the colt injections of an anabolic steroid (something that is legal in Kentucky, Maryland and New York) each month but had not given him his shot in mid-May, explaining he wanted Big Brown to “run clean”. Instead, the colt didn’t run at all when it really counted.

And most importantly, Big Brown simply wasn’t the super horse everybody thought he was. He dominated mediocre fields in the Derby and Preakness, and he failed miserably when things finally didn’t go his way.

Big Brown, his owners and many supporters notwithstanding, the big loser in the Belmont was Three Chimneys Farm, the Kentucky breeding operation that paid a staggering $50 million for the right to stand Big Brown at stud when his racing career ends. Three Chimneys is now left with a colt who, off Saturday’s race, is damaged goods, and, although Big Brown still figures to be popular with breeders, many will take a second look before paying six figures to send a mare to a colt who came out of the weekend as one of the biggest question marks in racing history.