Results tagged “Big Brown” from The Sports Desk

It's the only sure thing in this year's Breeders' Cup: A star horse was bound to miss the Oct. 24-25 event at Santa Anita, and writers were bound to wring their hands in sympathy over the latest blow to the sport's marketing efforts.

Big Brown hurt himself in a workout in New York this morning, and though the injury doesn't sound serious, it's enough to knock the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner out of a hoped-for showdown with 2007 Horse of the Year Curlin in the Breeders' Cup Classic at Santa Anita on Oct. 25. Disappointing.

The first updated Classic odds I've seen come from William Hill, the Ireland-based bookmaker. In the new prices, California fans will note the juicy odds on local major-race winners Colonel John, Go Between, Well Armed and Mast Track.

Curlin 9-4
Henrythenavigator 9-2
Casino Drive 7-1
Duke of Marmalade 7-1
Colonel John 8-1
Go Between 8-1
Ravens Pass 10-1
Well Armed 12-1
Mambo in Seattle 16-1
Mast Track 40-1

Curlin's odds drop from 3-1, reflecting the withdrawal of Big Brown, who was 4-1. Henrythenavigator, Duke of Marmalade and Ravens Pass are European stars. Well Armed, winner of the recent Goodwood Stakes at Santa Anita, could go in the Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile instead of the Classic.

A lot of columnists, commentators and Congressmen are taking an interest these days in horse racing's problems with breakdowns and drugs. To them I say: Welcome to the wake. What took you so long?

As someone who covered racing full- and part-time for 16 years, I'm happy to see non-racing writers on the case, but I'm ticked off by the suggestion that some kind of shameful secret has been exposed. Shameful, maybe. Secret, hardly.

In my very first week on the racing beat in January 1991, I covered hearings into the detection of cocaine in horses in the care of 15 mostly prominent California thoroughbred, harness and quarterhorse trainers. In one of my last horse-racing columns in early 2007, I wrote about some of the sport's leaders trying to crack down on steroids. In between my byline appeared over probably hundreds of stories about equine drugs -- the Daily News online archive shows 107 horse-with the word "medication," 38 with the word "Clenbuterol," 19 with the word "morphine," etc.

Stories about allegations of illegal -- or at least controversial -- medication use in racehorses were in the paper all the time.

What's disappointing about today's Belmont Stakes is not that Big Brown lost but that he didn't run his race. We might never know exactly why he didn't. We'll definitely never know what would have happened if he did.

Of the 11 hopefuls to come up short in the Belmont during this 30-year Triple Crown drought, Big Brown is the only one to lay an egg like this without an apparent hard-luck excuse -- something like Spectacular Bid's safety-pin mishap or War Emblem's stumbling start.

As the ABC-TV commentators speculated that the well-documented left-front-foot trouble had been worse than the trainer Rick Dutrow let on, I thought of a 1971 Sports Illustrated cover headline: "CANONERO SHOULD NOT HAVE RUN."

Even if the horse racing gods don't stop Big Brown's slightly sleazy owners and trainer from winning the Triple Crown, a more earthly obstacle might get in the way of the Belmont Stakes favorite.

Namely, the extra quarter-mile of soil that makes the Belmont a wholly different challenge than the Kentucky Derby. I covered too many failed Triple Crown bids -- five in my years as a racing writer -- to think Big Brown is going to have it easy. I saw too many horses look like Triple Crown winners as they turned into the long homestretch to think Saturday's race will be over before it's over, let alone before it's begun as trainer Rick Dutrow has boasted.

I looked up the postmortem I wrote after the 2004 Belmont, in which Triple Crown hopeful Smarty Jones led but was passed by Birdstone. ...

Unlike 30 years ago, when Affirmed completed the last Triple Crown sweep, people talk horses with the aid of objective measuring sticks. Since 1992, the Daily Racing Form has published Andy Beyer's speed figures in horses' past-performance charts, rating horses' efforts based on their clockings and the apparent conditions of the tracks. Looking at Big Brown's Beyers, Racing Form executive/columnist/blogger Steve Crist says the star colt's Kentucky Derby and Preakness ratings compare unfavorably with recent Triple Crown hopefuls'.

Read Crist's whole blog entry and the data by clicking here.

In line at the Coffee Bean in Woodland Hills this morning, I saw a man wearing a Hollywood Park "Go Baby Go" cap, and I asked him which horse he likes in the Preakness. We laughed, because we agreed Big Brown (photo, left) seems so much better than the rest of the 3-year-olds this season, it's hard to even start a debate about who'll win Saturday's second race of the Triple Crown. It's one of those cases where you can't bet against him (he's by far the likeliest winner) but you can't bet on him or even use him in exactas and trifectas (his odds are prohibitively short).

Which leads to my next question for the Coffee Bean racing fan, whose name is Nasef, and who is an engineer: Are you more interested in this Preakness, because Big Brown might be something special, or less interested, because it's a race that's hard to gamble on?

Nasef said he's more interested.

If each horse in Saturday's Kentucky Derby repeated his or her best previous performance, Big Brown would run away with the race. That knowledge isn't the end of the Derby handicapping process. But it's a good place the start your analysis.

In my former life as a horse-racing beat writer, I played with various ways of rating Derby contenders and settled on a labor-intensive numbers system that sizes up prep-race efforts based on 10 factors. Basically, horses get the highest marks for wins, wide winning margins and sharp speed figures in prestigious races at long distances at major tracks against big fields. After I see how the horses stack up by these objective standards, I start to make judgment calls and decide who to bet on.

Read on to see how my numbers rank the 20 horses entered Wednesday for the 134th Kentucky Derby. I've listed them with their post positions (in parentheses), jockeys and morning-line odds. On the second line for each horse is his or her best result and most recent result if that's different.