I don’t know what happened to Big Brown. My suspicion is that it’s simply the unpredictable nature of animals when humans use them for their own purposes.
He was running third and in great position to win the Triple Crown at the three-quarter turn of the Belmont Stakes when he inexplicably faded. “I had no horse,” jockey Ken Desormeaux said.
That happens. Winning the Triple Crown is enormously difficult. If it weren’t, we would have had at least one since the last winner, Affirmed, 30 years ago.
Big Brown trainer Richard Dutrow Jr., didn’t get that. For weeks, Dutrow boasted that Big Brown was a guarantee to take it. He called the Triple Crown “a foregone conclusion” for Big Brown.
Give me a break. For Dutrow to go on such boasts is to disrespect the difficulty of the Triple Crown and the ability of the rival horses. Nothing — NOTHING — in horse racing is a guarantee. Hey, even Secretariat lost five of his 21 races and we’re talking about the most dominant racehorse ever.
Big Brown was no Secretariat, but he was and is a magnificent animal. Here’s hoping he just didn’t feel like running Sunday and that nothing is wrong with him.
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