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Big Brown

Old 05-31-2008, 10:08 PM
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Little known fact about Big Brown :


Hopes high of Big Brown delivering Triple Crown
Eddie Fremantle
The Observer, Sunday June 1 2008

On Saturday, at 6.30pm on New York's picturesque Belmont Park racetrack, Big Brown and his jockey, Kent Desormeaux, will attempt to make history. It has been 30 years since a horse claimed America's Triple Crown by winning the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes; 30 years since Affirmed and his teenage rider, the great Steve Cauthen, edged home from Alydar by four inches. In the long, lean years since, 10 horses have come close to equalling Affirmed's achievement. All of them have failed at the final, most testing hurdle - Belmont's unforgiving track.

Yet, this time, it could all be different. Big Brown began his career as a 14-1 long shot on the last day of the 2007 Saratoga meeting, all but ignored by pundits and punters, but that race, which he ran away with, was the last time anyone underestimated this powerful colt, with his combination of strength, stamina and dazzling turn of speed. It is not simply that Big Brown, named after the nickname for the United States Postal Service, has won every race he has competed in, it is that he has won them with style. In the tense five weeks that make up the Triple Crown competition, that is a point in his favour: where horses such as Funny Cide, in 2003, and Smarty Jones, in 2004, ran out of steam in the final leg, Big Brown's easy Preakness win should mean he is relatively fresh for Belmont.

It helps, too, that this is not the strongest of Belmont fields - his closest competitor is the talented, but inexperienced, Japanese colt Casino Drive. Small wonder that in the past week, the buzz surrounding Big Brown has become a cacophony. Thirty years is a long time to wait for most things - in sport, it is a lifetime.

The stakes, then, are high and even seasoned racegoers could be forgiven a mild attack of nerves when the news broke last week that Big Brown has a quarter crack in his hoof and has not yet trained properly. To his trainer, Rick Dutrow, however, nerves are merely something lesser mortals succumb to.

'I fully expect Big Brown to win,' says Dutrow, a man who is effortlessly both laconic and bullish. 'He's in a zone right now and I don't see how he can get beat. I've been trying to be humble and modest, but the horse is just throwing up so many different signs. If people think I'm talking too big, all they have to do is see what I see with the horse and that there is no way of me down-playing it. I just feel we have the best horse and he will do what he has to do.'

Just how good Big Brown is a matter of some debate. Dutrow admits the Preakness field and Saturday's Belmont Stakes are weaker than in previous years: 'I was the first to say the Preakness field wasn't that strong and I feel the same about the Belmont,' he says. 'Maybe it is just not a real strong year for three-year-olds, but I feel as good as we can right now. These horses just cannot run with Big Brown. It's not Big Brown's fault, it's not their fault. We are just sitting in an unbelievable spot.'

This outspoken attitude has won Dutrow more enemies than friends. 'I know some people think the wrong way of me and that's fine,' he says. 'We do not have time to straighten out why people do not like me. It's not important to me - I got enough people like me out there too.'

As Dutrow is the first to admit, he has more past than most to rehash. His 13-year-old daughter Molly is the result of a brief, drug-fuelled relationship. The difficult relationship with Molly's mother, who was subsequently murdered by drug dealers, coupled with his own addictions, sparked a bitter falling out with his father, a respected trainer. The pair remained estranged at the time of Dutrow Senior's death from pancreatic cancer in 1999 and the rift with his father remains a rare raw spot. Asked, after the Preakness, whether he would dedicate a Triple Crown victory to him, Dutrow changed the subject, choosing instead to reiterate his belief they would win it. He recently admitted he has yet to visit his father's grave.

Yet, by and large, it is not Dutrow's personal life that has led to the endless whispers and the suggestions that, perhaps, this potential Triple Crown success story is not the fairytale it seems. The trainer has readily admitted to using the steroid Winstrol - which is banned in 10 US states, albeit none in which the Triple Crown is run - on his horses and, since 1976, he has been suspended or fined 72 times by US horse-racing authorities. Some of the incidents concern his own drug use; others are connected to doping incidents with his horses. He refuses to be drawn on the subject. 'I hear what people say about me, but they don't know me; they are just reading what they have been reading about me and some of it is true and some of it just doesn't add up to a whole lot - it doesn't bother me.'

Dutrow angers as many people as he entertains, but, luckily, his articulate jockey is not one of them. Dutrow says Desormeaux was not his first choice to ride Big Brown - he preferred Edgar Prado, who will now ride Big Brown's biggest rival, Casino Drive - but the 38-year-old is calm enough, and experienced enough to assuage most people's doubts.

Over the course of a lengthy career, that has brought almost 5,000 winners, Desormeaux has had only one serious blip - and even that turned out to be a blessing. A perceived cockiness led him to fall out with the main trainers in California, where he was based. Unable to get the rides he felt he deserved, the jockey relocated to New York in 2006, a move that led to his partnership with Big Brown. As he said after winning the Kentucky Derby: 'I feel like the luckiest man in the world. I uprooted my family, grabbed my kids from their friends and this was why...'

It is not just Big Brown's connections who hope that, finally, the 30-year wait will be ended. US horse racing is in turmoil, with gates dropping and tracks closing. Big Brown's magnificent Kentucky Derby win was overshadowed by the death of the filly Eight Belles; his victory in the Preakness was overshadowed by the debate about how good the field was; now, his preparation for the Belmont is being overshadowed by a lengthy argument about the use of steroids in US horse racing. Yet, as Dutrow argues, the horse does not know any of this - the horse will just go out there and race. 'It doesn't matter about me; if you just meet the horse you'd root for him,' he says. 'I don't see how anyone who sees Big Brown race, the way he races, couldn't want him to win.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jun/01/horseracing
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Old 05-31-2008, 10:34 PM
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Sounds like someone who knows how to use photo shop has a homework assignment....
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Old 06-01-2008, 12:59 AM
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postal parcel tomato tomato hey let's call the whole thing off
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Old 06-03-2008, 05:46 AM
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Hope he wins the Belmont and no injuries. What a beautiful horse. Go Big Brown!!!
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Old 06-03-2008, 09:40 AM
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Go Post Office Go!!!
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Old 06-03-2008, 11:05 AM
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He's a beautiful horse and I wish him all the best. That being winning the Triple Crown AND not getting himself hurt. Here's a really good article about his latest workout. http://tcm.bloodhorse.com/article/45536.htm
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