Preakness 2000-2008

Next Saturday is the Preakness Stakes, and we will find out if Mine That Bird is the real thing or just a flash in the pan. Meanwhile, it is time to review previous Preakness races courtesy of YouTube.


Red Bullet 2000:





Point Given 2001:





War Emblem 2002 (call in Spanish):





Funny Cide 2003:





Smarty Jones 2004:





Afleet Alex 2005:





Bernardini 2006. Barbaro broke down in this race and was vanned off the track. He died several months later from complications. Race:








Curlin 2007:






Big Brown 2008:

Saturday is the Kentucky Derby

It is time to look at some of the past races:

2008: Big Brown:



2007: Street Sense:



2006: Barbaro:



2005: Giacomo



2004: Smarty Jones:



2003: Funny Cide:



2002: War Emblem:



2001: Monarchos:



2000: Fusaichi Pegasus:



Official Kentucky Derby YouTube channel is here.

Breeders' Cup

This year's Breeders' Cup Classic may be a bust. Big Brown, this year's winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, has injured his foot and will be retired:

Trainer Rick Dutrow said the 3-year-old colt, who was preparing for the Breeders' Cup Classic on Oct. 25, appeared to kick himself while working on the turf course at Aqueduct with stablemate Kip Deville. Big Brown was able to complete the six-furlong work when Dutrow noticed blood coming out of the foot.

"It looks like he grabbed himself in a bad spot," Dutrow said.

The race, anticipated to be with champion Curlin, was to be Big Brown's last before retiring to stud at Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Kentucky.

It was a pretty bad injury:

"Big Brown has been retired," said Michael Iavarone, co-owner of IEAH Stables. "He not only tore the bulb off his foot, but half the foot was torn off. We did everything we could to get to the Breeders' Cup. It's devastating. And what makes it even worse is that he worked great."

The handlers had no other choice but to retire him.

After Big Brown's disastrous Belmont Stakes finish, if you can call it a finish, he won the Monmouth Stakes and the Haskell Invitational. He had seven wins in eight starts.

2008 Monmouth Stakes

Big Brown returned to form today when he won the Monmouth Stakes on grass.

Belmont Stakes.

Big Brown tested negative for any illegal substances.

Horse Racing News.

Rick Dutrow attempts to defend himself from allegations he used a banned substance on one of his horses, causing a 15-day suspension.
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Racehorse Chelokee is on the mend and may be released to go home in a few weeks.

He injured himself by dislocating his right front ankle in the Alysheba Stakes back in May.
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A picture released a few days ago showed Big Brown's shoe was halfway off early in the Belmont Stakes. This may explain why he wasn't up to it.




(From ESPN)
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After all these years, Secretariat remains the gold standard of thoroughbred racing.

Belmont Stakes.

Was it the shoe that caused Big Brown's defeat?

I like this comment:

I've been following racing on and off for about 35 years and racing finally has its version of the Zapruder film for fans to speculate and build conspiracy theories for years to come.

"No Mas!" Belmont Stakes.

Both Rick Dutrow and Kent Desormeaux have decided to bury the hatchet over last Saturday's debacle at Belmont Park.

And among many possibilities for Big Brown's embarrassing last-place finish is this:

Some media reports suggest that Big Brown, who exited from the rail post, was startled leaving the gate by the sight of Roy
Williamson, the starter for the New York Racing Association, who in typical fashion June 7 stood on the track to break the field.

“I see the (starter) on the track; I don’t know what he was doing,” Dutrow said. “But I’m not going to say that is the reason the horse got beat, or got jostled around the first turn. Instead of being (inside) the rail, he was (outside) standing right in the one path. I don’t know if he was there when they ran by him, maybe (Williamson) ducked under (the rail.)

“I said to Kent, ‘Why didn’t you say that in the paper? Everybody is asking me all these asking questions, and you never mentioned anything about this guy on the track, and now you are mentioning it.’ I said, ‘it would have helped if you said that right away.’ They are asking me these questions, and I don’t know. But (the starter) was there, and I don’t know if it played a part or not, and it doesn’t matter. Hey, what are we going to do, call (the New York Racing Association) and say, ‘Hey, what was this about, and we want a re-race?’

It sounds like we will never know the truth about this race. Dutrow definitely has no desire to talk about the speculation he undertrained Big Brown because of the quarter crack.

More here.

Big Brown, of course, is the victim in all of this. It isn't his fault his connections screwed up.

According to Haskin, you just have to question Big Brown's lack of preparation for the Belmont:

It is very possible those missed training days proved more costly than people think, because it wasn’t until then that Big Brown started getting too tough to even walk around the shed row and was crawling out of his skin. Coming off the track one morning he was bucking and hard to handle. Remember, the quarter crack came after a week of little activity, so he went 17 days following the Preakness without working. He became too wound up and it continued all the way to race day in the holding barn and on the track. That’s not want you want to see from a professional horse like Big Brown before a mile and a half race. His strength was his ability to settle and relax, and those missed days and having only one easy breeze in three weeks most likely lit a fire in him that caused him to bubble over on race day. Had his work not been postponed until Tuesday of race week because of the quarter crack, Dutrow, if he so desired, could have blown him out the day before or the day of the race to take the nervous edge off him.

And if the quarter crack was a concern for Dutrow, then Big Brown should have been scratched from the Belmont. The pressure is great to run a Derby-Preakness winner in the Belmont and win the Triple Crown, but one only has to look at the 1969 and 1971 runnings of the classic to know you cannot run an unsound horse in a race and expect to win it.

The responsibility for the debacle rests squarely on Rick Dutrow.

The No Mas! Stakes, AKA Belmont Stakes.

After several days of near silence, Rick Dutrow passes the buck to Kent Desormeaux for blame in Big Brown's last-place finish in last Saturday's Belmont Stakes:

“I don’t want to hurt anyone, especially Kent,” Dutrow told The Associated Press on Tuesday morning in his barn at Aqueduct. “But I still don’t understand what happened. I don’t see the horse with a problem, so I have to direct my attention toward the ride. That’s all I can come up with.”

The horse had a quarter crack, Rick, and because of the quarter crack you didn't prepare Big Brown for the race like you should have.

Belmont Stakes.

Bill Nack interviewed Billy Turner, trainer of Seattle Slew and the last surviving trainer of a Triple Crown winner, about last Saturday's disastrous Belmont Stakes, at least a disaster for Big Brown and his connections.

Turner was pissed about Big Brown's connections running the horse in the first place when he was not "structurally sound." As I said a million times before, the great Buckpasser, the favorite for the 1966 classics, had to skip them entirely because of a quarter crack.

And Turner was pissed off royal at Kent Desormeaux, who already received a lot of criticism over Real Quiet's narrow loss in the 1998 Belmont Stakes. I love the fact Turner compared his ride with the infamous No Mas! boxing incident when Roberto Duran, apparently suffering from gas pains from eating too much steak beforehand (or didn't), abruptly quit his fight with Sugar Ray Leonard back in 1980.

“He was getting beat and he couldn’t stand it,” Turner said. “When I saw him pull up, I thought, ‘Oh, no! He’s broken down and the rider’s saving him.’ But then I saw him when he walked off and there was nothing wrong with the horse. The horse was happy. He would have beaten most of the horses in the Belmont…No wonder (trainer) Rick Dutrow had nothing to say after the race. What can you say? The stewards have got to do something to prevent this from becoming a regular practice. They can’t allow this kind of thing to go on.”

What made this worse was all kinds of gossip abounded about the race being rigged, that Desormeaux threw the race. Of course it didn't happen. Questions could be raised as to whether Dutrow ordered Desormeaux to ease the horse if it looked as if he couldn't win the race. In any case, if Big Brown continues racing, it is very likely Desormeaux will never ride him again.

Turner saves his harshest remarks for trainer Rick Dutrow. Turner studied previous Belmont races and how winning trainers prepared their horses. Turner knows what he is talking about. In his opinion, Dutrow didn't train Big Brown properly. It is clear the horse was and is very talented; notice the way he so easily won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness despite some criticisms of the quality of the field. It was the quarter crack that drove Dutrow to prepare Big Brown in a half-assed manner. With that injury and with that training, or lack of it, it would have been a miracle for Big Brown to have won Saturday's race.

Read the whole article. It is excellent.

This

is actually a better video than the one I posted Saturday of the 2008 Belmont Stakes. It focuses on Big Brown being eased:




So what about those hooves? This is an earlier report, one before the Belmont:

Belmont Stakes.

Michael Iavarone, one of the co-owners of Big Brown, says there is nothing physically wrong with the horse that caused him to quit the race Saturday and be eased.

Iavarone thought of the possibility the horse simply didn't like the track surface, and the horse got angry with it.

Or as I think, Big Brown got mad at the jockey and refused to run for him.
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Belmont Stakes III.

For years to come they will be talking about yesterday's race.

At least Majestic Prince came in second in 1969, beaten by Arts and Letters. Majestic Prince shouldn't have run because of soundness issues. He never raced again.

And no, Kent Desormeaux would never shame himself, his family, or the racing industry by "throwing" a race. If anybody threw the race, it was the horse.

Belmont Stakes II.

This was a press conference following the Belmont Stakes:

Belmont Stakes.

Was the lack of steroids in Big Brown's system the reason he "conked out" in yesterday's Belmont Stakes?

In a way I am glad Big Brown decided (and I do believe the horse made the decision) not to win the Belmont and the Triple Crown. I can't think of a trainer less deserving of the Triple Crown win than Dutrow. I don't think he should be allowed anywhere near a racetrack given his sordid history.

If Big Brown had won the Belmont, the whole sport would have been tarnished.

One great day would not have healed racing’s wounds, but a great victory by Big Brown could have validated an industry consumed with breeding, but one still unable to come up with a horse fast enough, strong enough and durable enough to win the Triple Crown.

If the trainer were anybody other than Rick Dutrow, I would agree with this.

Belmont Stakes II.

Rick Dutrow bragged too damned much about his horse for his own good.

Yes, Big Brown made the history books, but he did it as the only Triple Crown hopeful who finished last in the race.

Nobody has any answers as to why Big Brown fizzled. I submit the horse decided to extract a little payback.

Here is the 2008 Belmont Stakes

thanks to Kitan1 over on YouTube.

Click on the film and favorite and rate the race, which I am embedding here:






More about Big Brown from the NYT blog:

From Alex Brown: Big Brown was eased. He was rank too early, got bounced around and
never relaxed. He was taken to the outside and simply did not fire. He was asked to run early and then back peddled. Kent then eased Big Brown.

That is plainly visible on the replay. Big Brown wanted to run early, and when he didn't get his way, he said "screw it" and didn't perform.

One thing Desormeaux told me at Bodines in Carson City a couple of weeks ago was to pray for Big Brown to be safe. That was his big concern, and he took care of him.

Big Brown Didn't

have it today, and Kent Desormeaux did the right thing in easing him up in the race. It doesn't appear he was injured on the outside, and he wasn't lame. He will get a thorough examination to see if there is internal bleeding.

He finished last in the race, the first Triple Crown hopeful to do so.

I personally didn't think he should have run in the race given the fact he had a quarter crack. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a generation ago, the great Buckpasser wasn't entered in any of the Triple Crown races because he suffered from a quarter crack.

The track vet said he was not injured at all, as least as far as it is known. Either he bled internally, or he was simply psyched out after having some problems in the race.

Kent Desormeaux said he "had no horse." Big Brown basically quit, so Kent eased him up when he found out the horse wasn't going to make his run.

It's also possible Big Brown simply didn't like the track:

Speaking on the television broadcast, Desormeaux said, "The racetrack just didn’t hold him up. He slipped. I got him outside early and he cantered. He wanted to jump up in the bridle but I could tell I had no horse. I took care of him."

Da' Tara, a longshot trained by Nick Zito, won. The horse paid $79.00. Denis of Cork finished second, while Anak Nakal, also trained by Zito, dead-heated with Ready's Echo for third.

The video of the race is here. When it comes up on YouTube I'll post it on the blog.

You can tell about three-quarters into the race Big Brown wasn't making his move at all. He was stuck in third, and then Desormeaux started pulling him back. He ran out of gas. It was plainly visible in the race.

Trainer Rick Dutrow:

"The horse is not injured. We will scope the horse. I was looking for a problem and so far I don’t see a problem. I am looking for something to be wrong and I don’t see it. When they turned for home I knew something wasn’t right.

"If we feel he is 100%, we will get him back in training and move on. This is a very disappointing race and right now it looks like he will have a good life even if he never races again. When Kent starting pulling him up I thought something was wrong. He’s in good shape and we’re very proud of him. Something has got to be wrong when he puts in a race like this. I just don’t know what happened."

Triple Crown.

Personally, I am concerned about Big Brown's quarter crack. If he manages to win the Belmont today, and everybody thinks he will, then I'll take back my words.

I hope the race will be safe.

Triple Crown.

Affirmed's owner Patrice Wolfson is hoping for a Triple Crown winner this Saturday, 30 years after her horse did it in 1978.

Big Brown has drawn the rail for this Saturday's race.