Did you see the horse race yesterday? I switched over after watching Hillary’s speech. The sportscasters spent hours and hours saying how great Big Brown was and how this horse will most likely win the race and therefore be the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years. They focused on everyone surrounding this horse until you began to believe that Big Brown would be running the race by himself. That is what his owner thought when he told the world that of course Big Brown was going to win. Of course.
In the middle of the media attention over Big Brown there was one sad note. Jim McKay had died. He was the ultimate sportscaster that generations grew up listening. He made the Olympics real to us and then there was that line, you know the one I mean, “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” I forget most of the stuff I learned when I was in fifth grade but I remember that line and that poor skier.
Then back to Belmont and Big Brown’s run for the Triple Crown. Having previously listened to Hillary’s speech I found an odd kind of connection to the Democratic primary when at one point a sportscaster remarked that the only horse that gave any kind of competition to Big Brown was the filly, Eight Belles, in the Kentucky Derby. And you might recall that after coming in a strong second the big filly had given all she could and collapsed, never to get up again.
After three hours we knew everything about Big Brown. That he had a small crack in his hoof that they repaired but they didn’t see that as a problem. It was also known that in the Derby and Preakness, Big Brown had been dosed with drugs, which is legal in horse racing. Perhaps because of this horse, these drugs will be illegal next year but for now they could be used. However the owner wanted to prove that his horse could win on his own and so he did not inject Big Brown for this race. And after hearing the sob stories regarding the owners and jockeys children, more than tired of the braggadocio of the winner, after all the excitement leading up to finally having a Triple Crown winner, we were more than ready for the race.
By now you know once again there wasn’t a Triple Crown winner. It wasn’t so much that Big Brown was beaten as it was that the favorite horse lost. Coming down the final stretch Big Brown just deflated while Da’Tara who led from the start was still in the lead and crossed the finish line in first place. Meanwhile Big Brown just didn’t have it in him to compete much less win. And so his jockey pulled him up and Big Brown leisurely galloped in at last place. The audience was stunned – once again they were denied seeing a Triple Crown winner while the other owners, trainers and jockeys were secretly pleased that the boasting and annoying owner of Big Brown was denied the ultimate horse racing prize.
Of course now came the analysis to find out what exactly happened. Many say it was that crack in Big Brown’s hoof which caused him to miss some training on the days leading up to the race. Luckily the vets who checked him out after the race found nothing physically wrong with him. I think, as do many others, that the horse didn’t act right because of the missed drug injections. And if that is true then I am glad he didn’t win for perhaps like in baseball Big Brown might have had an asterisk next to his name indicating that he was on drugs when he won. Better to deny him the Triple Crown then to have a Barry Bonds type controversy. And then again, maybe it really was a tiny hang nail type crack in his hoof that brought the huge horse down. And so in one last nod to Jim McKay and childhood silliness perhaps it was “the agony of de-feet”.
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