Big Brown big disappointment
I watched the Belmont Stakes with racehorse owners Saturday. Not on purpose, really, but at a family reunion outside Ada, which is fairly significant horse country. My wife’s uncle raises quarterhorses, and a friend of his, who later in the day had a horse running at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico, watched with us. Their wives were in the room, and two of my wife’s cousins.
These were serious horse people, and it was a fascinating exercise for me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known the level of passion for Big Brown to pull off the Triple Crown. They watched intently and pleaded with Big Brown to turn it on around the backstretch and sat somewhat stunned after the epic defeat. Big Brown had nothing left in the tank and fell all the way to last place. Da’ Tara led wire to wire in a huge upset.
I didn’t really care whether Big Brown won or not. I thought it would be cool to see the Triple Crown jinx end, but at the same time I didn’t want the 30-year jinx to end. I think the drought keeps some racing intrigue alive.
I knew horse people want a Triple Crown winner, for a variety of reasons. But I never knew until Saturday the depth of that desire. The industry had hope for Funny Cide and complete confidence in Smarty Jones, then along comes Big Brown, who seemed like a sure thing. The odds were 1-to-4 that he would win.
But Big Brown didn’t win. And horse people were sorely disappointed.
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Comments
Berry,
Well, well. Our culture has been steadily equating animals with humans, now they have become human. Someone must have slipped Big brown some of his press clippings in horsese. But at the same time Big Brown didn’t have one clue about what was at stake by his blowing it big time. You just can’t count on anything these days. Who would have thought that Big Brown is an incarnation of Terrell Owens.
After the race some commentators hinted that a change should be made in the schedule of the races. They want to give more time between races. That’s a lot of hoohy!! How about the horses in the past that got it done under these conditions? What I could see is a rule that says that if you want to go for the triple crown you have to run in all three races, not just run in the last one. Of course that would take away from what I just said, also. You got to give crerdit to the Oklahoma horse, that ran in all three.