Big Brown zooms through first two stops
on path to the Triple Crown
Awesome winning performances in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness raise specter
of greatness for colt trained by Maryland native Richard Dutrow.
by Sean Clancy
Walter Blum Jr. pulled out a crumpled pack of Marlboro Lights
and stuck two of them in his mouth. He lit both and handed
one to Michelle Nevin.
“ It’s our tradition,” Blum said through a deep drag of smoke.
“ It’s worked so far,” Nevin said, taking her first hit.
The toteboard read three minutes to post for the 133rd Preakness Stakes:
three minutes—two cigarettes—until game time.
By the time assistant starter Kevin Dzbynski guided Kentucky Derby winner Big
Brown into stall 7, and jockey Kent Desormeaux settled in place aboard the
undefeated colt, the cigarettes had been snuffed out on Pimlico’s turf
course and trainer Richard Dutrow’s assistants stood focused on the far
end of the Pimlico stretch.
“ I think he’ll sit second behind Tres Borrachos and then take over
at the half mile pole,” Blum said.
“ I think he’ll make the lead,” Nevin said.
Blum and Nevin squinted through the afternoon sun. Everybody got quiet—especially
Desormeaux, who had work to do.
As the gates sprung open, Big Brown clawed in place, like an oarsman paddling
hard upstream, losing a length to his 11 rivals. The big long-striding colt
owned by IEAH Stables and Paul Pompa Jr. usually breaks sharply, leaving others
to orbit around him.
In the Preakness, Desormeaux had to audible; this wouldn’t be the
cool outside stalking trip so eloquently designed in the Derby. No, that scenario
was gone. The 38-year-old Hall of Fame jockey guided his mount to the rail
as longshot Riley Tucker crossed over and Arkansas Derby-G2 winner Gayego shook
off a bumpy start to roll to the lead from the middle of the track.
Desormeaux found a pocket for Big Brown on the rail in third, as Gayego carried
the field into the first turn through an opening quarter of 23.59 seconds.
Edgar Prado, who missed the chance to ride Big Brown when IEAH Stables committed
to Desormeaux last winter, angled Riley Tucker to Big Brown’s border.
This is the Preakness, not the Peace Corps; nothing is given away.
Desormeaux changed plays again, yanking on Big Brown’s rubber ring bit,
interrupting his rhythm and forcing him to alter course from the inside to
the outside through a half in :46.81. Once there, Desormeaux and Big Brown
could relax.
Not Nevin. She snapped her fingers just after the half-mile split. “Come
on Big Brown . . . All right Brown. All right Brown. All right Brown.” And
yes, it was all right. And over.
Anybody who knows Desormeaux understood what was happening the instant
his white and blue-starred helmet pivoted over his right shoulder. With about
three furlongs to run and with two horses still in front of him, Desormeaux
knew he had the horses he could see, and he sneaked a peek. He saw what the
fans knew— nothing was moving in front of or behind Big Brown. With a
couple of light squeezes from his hands, the jockey stoked Big Brown, who started
filling up like a water balloon. Third choice Kentucky Bear (at 14-1) tried
to maneuver through on the rail but met traffic, while second choice Gayego
(9-1) and Riley Tucker (36-1) looked for the exit ramp.
Big Brown circled past Gayego and Riley Tucker on the turn. Desormeaux looked
again. Nothing. Desormeaux threw a cross at Big Brown and looked again. Nothing.
A man among boys. Awed yet again, Blum and Nevin never said another word (screams
aren’t words). Big Brown cruised into the stretch, banging to his right
lead with daylight spreading between himself and his rivals.
Nevin and Blum hugged and jumped in the air as Big Brown sauntered past the
eighth pole. That’s how easy it was—celebrations started with
a furlong to run. Nearing the wire, Desormeaux had wrapped up on Big Brown,
looking more like Nevin in the morning than a jockey winning his second Preakness.
Derby Trial winner Macho Again closed mildly from the back to collect second,
with Fair Hill-based Icabad Crane rallying from 10th to finish third. The official
chart read five and a quarter lengths for Big Brown. It could have been three
times that.
Big Brown finished the mile and three-sixteenths in 1:54.80, 1.34 seconds slower
than the stakes record held jointly by Curlin, Louis Quatorze and Tank’s
Prospect.
“ In a hack, Michelle. In a hack,” Blum said as he sprinted down
the turf course to greet Big Brown.
Dutrow barreled from the tier of box seats above the finish line and met Blum,
Nevin and groom Ramiro Gonzales on the dirt track. Dutrow hugged Nevin, then
Blum, then grabbed Gonzales by the back of the neck and shook him like a duck
decoy.
Finally, Big Brown reached his team. Dutrow slapped Desormeaux on the leg and
bantered on about the horse. Dutrow and Desormeaux can talk. Listening, now
that’s a different story. Desormeaux leaned over and grabbed Dutrow,
trying to put clarity on the moment. “Hey. . . Hey. . . Hey. . . ”
Finally, Dutrow looked at his jockey. “It was in hand. In hand,” Desormeaux
whispered. “I left it in there.”
Dutrow cackled, thinking more of the Triple Crown’s third stage—the
mile and a half Belmont Stakes three weeks away—than its second.
“ To squeeze him today, after two weeks ago, it doesn’t make sense
if you don’t have to—more because we were coming back in two weeks
than there’s another one in three weeks,” Desormeaux said, admitting
he contemplated making it easy on Big Brown before the race. “He threw
it down; nothing’s easy. He just ran a mile and three sixteenths. But he’s
resilient as Jacob, my little man. Resilience. Resilience. Resilience.”
Desormeaux’s 9-year-old son, Jacob, has Usher Syndrome. There is
no cure. In another couple of years, Jacob Desormeaux probably won’t
be able to see or hear a horse race. But he has seen one of the greats in Big
Brown, who won his first five starts, including the Preakness, by a combined
margin of 39 lengths.
Bred in Kentucky by Dr. Gary Knapp’s Monticule Farm, Big Brown attracted
Florida-based pinhooker Eddie Woods at the 2006 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October
Yearling sale. Simply on looks, Woods loved the colt by Claiborne Farm’s
decent but unheralded sire Boundary (a now-pensioned son of Danzig), and out
of the Nureyev mare Mien.
Because of his light catalog page, Big Brown was bound to slip through the
cracks. Woods made sure he slipped into his hands.
“ Jeeeeeez. . . ” Woods said to his fiancee, Angela, when he first
saw the colt with the white spot splashed above his left elbow.
“ We can’t afford him,” Angela said.
“ Sure we can. Two blank dams, Boundary. I’m going to buy this horse,” Woods
said.
Never get in the way of an Irishman and a horse deal.
Afraid to tip his hand to Knapp, Woods never went back to see hip number 589.
He watched from afar, just to see if the big, scopey April foal kept his composure
through the days leading up to the sale.
“ He’s a lovely horse,” Woods said. “Every time I looked
at him, I thought, ‘Man, I hope I can buy this horse.’ ” Woods
spent $60,000 and brought the colt home to his farm in Ocala. Woods’s opinion
never wavered as he watched everything come easily for Big Brown. Not flashy
or flamboyant, just steady. Because that is the business he’s in, Woods
consigned the colt to Keeneland’s April 2-year-olds in training sale.
The future Kentucky Derby/Preakness winner has a turf pedigree—and he
looked and moved like a turf performer—but given the choice between turf
or Polytrack for his pre-sale work at Keeneland, Woods decided to breeze him
over Polytrack, to give prospective buyers a glimpse at their options.
“ He always worked good on the dirt at home. Then I worked him on the turf
at home and he worked awesome,” Woods said. “He worked good on the
Polytrack, a second slower than the fastest horse, but that doesn’t add
up to anything at the end of the day.”
He went a quarter-mile in :21.20—nothing fancy. Jack Brothers and his
Hidden Brook team, shopping for New York owner Paul Pompa Jr., liked the breeze,
the price and the horse. Pompa, 49, who owns a trucking business in Brooklyn,
bought him for $190,000 and named him after UPS, which does business with Pompa’s
Truck-Rite Distribution Systems.
Looking at Big Brown, the name fit with or without UPS.Big Brown went to Pompa’s
main trainer, Pat Reynolds, at Belmont Park. Pompa and Reynolds had enjoyed
success together with stakes horses such as Zakocity, Watchmon, Unspoken Word
and others.
Four months after Keeneland, Reynolds had Big Brown ready to make his
career debut at Saratoga. Prado had the call but broke his ankle two days before
Big Brown’s unveiling, and Reynolds ended up with Mid-Atlantic based
Jeremy Rose for the mile and a sixteenth turf race on September 3. Big Brown
dwarfed his rivals in the paddock and the race. He won by 11 1\2 lengths in
an electric effort.
Pompa’s phone started ringing before he got home that afternoon. A businessman,
he entertained offers and finally took the one that allowed him to keep a piece
of the horse. IEAH Stables bought 75 percent of Big Brown for a reported $3
million.
“ I would do this deal 99 out of 100 times. The risk of injuries is so
big that you have to take some money off the table,” Pompa said after the
Preakness. “I had Watchmon—he ran in the 2005 Belmont. He fractured
his ankle and now he’s somebody’s pet. I don’t have partners.
It’s just me. This is the first partnership I’ve ever been involved
in. I got into this game because I needed some action. I started claiming some
horses, buying some horses. As I had some success, I stepped up the ladder. This
is action, baby.”
IEAH Stables knows action. Former Wall Street broker Michael Iavarone, 37,
formed International Equine Acquisitions Holdings Stables in 2003.
Richard Schiavo, 58, joined IEAH as an investor and now shares the president
and CEO title with Iavarone. They have leapt into prominence, buying proven
horses and collecting investors with alacrity. IEAH owns parts of 85 horses,
including Breeders’ Cup Mile-G1 winner Kip Deville, Dubai Golden
Shaheen-G1 and Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash-G1 winner Benny the Bull,
graded stakes winner Sharp Susan and 2008 Kentucky Derby starter Court Vision,
who is trained by Bill Mott. Big Brown is the flagship.
IEAH took Big Brown from Reynolds (he was given a 10 percent commission on
the sale), and transferred him to Dutrow. That’s when the waiting began.
Big Brown popped quarter cracks throughout the fall, missing the Breeders’ Cup
Juvenile Turf. Maryland native Dutrow, who calls everybody Babe, liked the
horse but knew he had to get his feet straight before he could think about
running him.
“ Before he brought him down to Florida, he said, ‘Michelle, I’m
bringing a horse down. You’re going to love him.’ He said it constantly,” Nevin
said. “But his feet weren’t right. They’d start out as little
infections, then he’d push them out as quarter cracks.”
Dutrow never panicked, never tried to force anything, even when Big Brown couldn’t
breeze during the entire month of January. Finally, Dutrow managed to get a
couple of breezes into the horse. One stood out to Desormeaux.
“ When he instilled my confidence. . . I remember when I worked him, it
was gale-force winds,” Desormeaux said. “Honest to God. This sucker
put his head down and was driving, trying to split the wind.
“ I got off him and Babe says, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I
bet that will be 15 lengths the fastest work.’ He said, ‘What are
you talking about, he went in 1:02.’ I said, ‘The wind was knocking
him sideways.’ I knew I was loaded.”
Dutrow entered Big Brown in a turf allowance race at Gulfstream Park on March
5. The race washed off the grass and Big Brown, with glue-on shoes, toyed with
the assignment, winning by 12 1\2 lengths with Desormeaux in a grip. He went
a mile over the fast track in 1:35.66.
“ That’s when I knew what we had. He’s different,” Dutrow
said. “Everybody liked the horse but then we knew. It would have been fine
if it stayed on the grass. He’d have won, but would we have tried the Florida
Derby? I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t think like that.”
Dutrow had no qualms about sending Big Brown to the Grade 1 Florida Derby 24
days later. Breaking from the outside post—no man’s land—at
Gulfstream, Big Brown outran all his 11 rivals into the first turn and then
waltzed home by five lengths. The race would solidify Big Brown as the Kentucky
Derby favorite.
Dutrow trained Big Brown at Palm Meadows Training Center in Florida, putting
him through three five-furlong drills before sending him to Churchill Downs
on the Monday before the Derby. Nevin climbed aboard for a three-furlong move
on Thursday. With a new rubber ring bit replacing the egg-butt snaffle that
slid through his mouth in the Florida Derby, Big Brown moved straight and true,
blitzing through three panels in 35.40 seconds. Look out.
“ He knows. He’s very confident, not cheeky, but he shows you how
confident he is, the way he stands and looks at things. The first day he galloped
here, he jumped off, his ears went dead-straight away; they never went to the
side. He never looked to the side, just dead straight,” Nevin said. “He’s
just been showing us the whole time. He covers the ground so easily. When he
went three-eighths in :35. . . you don’t feel like you’re doing anything;
it just feels like he’s galloping. I knew straight away.”
Faced with the choice of 1, 2, 18, 19 or 20 in the post position draw, Dutrow
opted for 20, thinking he’d be free and clear to find the right spot.
The only trouble Big Brown would encounter was on the way out of the paddock.
As Illinois Derby-G2 winner Recapturetheglory entered the tunnel,
he imploded, tossing his rider, E.T. Baird, to the ground. Big Brown halted
in place, delicately poised between a horse having a meltdown in front of him
and a throng of people encroaching from behind. He stood and stared at the
melee while Desormeaux directed traffic from his saddle. Gonzales circled Big
Brown as if he were cooling out after a race.
Eventually Recapturetheglory regrouped and Big Brown walked nonchalantly
onto the track.
Straightforward. That’s how it went in the Derby. Angling from the 20-lane
to the 5-lane, Big Brown stalked three lengths off the lead as the field hit
the first turn. The hard part was over.
When asked, he rolled past the leaders, turning for home in command. From there,
the only question was how announcer Luke Kruytbosch was going to describe it:
And here comes Big Brown and he’s swooping powerfully five-wide on the
outside. . . Big Brown is a superstar who’ll win the Kentucky Derby.
. .”
Big Brown won by four and three-quarters lengths over the filly Eight Belles
and a rallying Denis of Cork.
The celebration for Big Brown proved short-lived, as Eight Belles fell to the
dirt on the clubhouse turn. The gallant filly shattered her front ankles. On
the way to the winner’s circle, Big Brown spooked at her on the track,
tossing Desormeaux to the ground. It was another inauspicious moment for racing;
a Derby winner and a Derby death sharing the biggest stage. Veterinarians euthanized
Eight Belles on the track.
It was a long two weeks to the Preakness. Eight Belles was dead. The People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) circled the wagons and called for
the suspension of jockey Gabriel Saez for whip abuse. It was a laughable response
to a tragic situation.
While racing tried to overcome that tragedy, Dutrow, 48, danced a fine line
between his rap sheet of drug suspensions (for himself and his horses) and
his success with Big Brown.
He is a son of legendary trainer Richard E. (Dickie) Dutrow, who completed
one corner of Maryland’s famous “Big Four” claiming trainer
rivalry in the 1960s and ’70s. The others were King Leatherbury, Bud
Delp and John Tammaro. The senior Dutrow died in 1999 with 3,665 winners to
his credit, good enough for 13th on the all-time list. Along with his two brothers,
Tony (49) and Chip (46), Ricky Dutrow dropped out of high school to work for
his father. High school would have been easier than Dick Dutrow’s shedrow.
At odds with his father from the beginning, Ricky opened a public stable for
himself in New York in 1995.
Dutrow’s horses run well. They look phenomenal. He doesn’t over-run
them; he wins with everything from claimers to stakes horses. Along the way,
he’s failed drug tests for marijuana and his horses have failed drug
tests for Butazolidin, clenbuterol, mepivacaine. He’s violated claiming
rules, broken rules about training horses when suspended and even got hit with
a charge of providing misleading information to the public. He lived in his
tack room and rode his bicycle around the stable area because he didn’t
have a driver’s license. Poster boy, he’s not.
“ Growing up, he was fearless. Always talented. And fearless,” said
Tony Dutrow, who trains successfully in the Mid-Atlantic region. “I hope
he doesn’t do something that gets himself in trouble. I think about that
all the time. Because Ricky is capable of getting himself in trouble. Even today,
I keep my fingers crossed that Ricky keeps himself out of trouble. We all do.
He works to keep his [trainer’s] license. That’s why he lives as
straight as he is, just to keep his license to train horses. He knows he can’t
lose that license.”
Dutrow needs horses to survive. If he weren’t training horses—betting,
claiming, dropping, breezing, racing—he would be dead. That’s what
his longtime owner Michael Dubb believes.
“ He wouldn't survive,” Dubb said from Pimlico’s Triple Crown
Room on Preakness day. “He’s not a regular guy, but he’s a
great guy. He’s Forrest Gump with horses. Without them, he wouldn’t
survive.”
For now, at least, Dutrow is thriving.
Before the Preakness, Dutrow relied on instinct and ignored critics when he
instructed Nevin to blow out Big Brown. About 12 hours before the Preakness,
the horse accelerated through a quarter of a mile in just over 25 seconds.
“ I swear somebody told Brown the plan. ‘Go a quarter of a mile.
Go away, pick it up, no gallop out.’ It’s like he heard us,” Nevin
said. “He galloped off, picked it up. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Then he had it
in mind to drop me on the way home.”
Dutrow was happy. The horse was happy. It was all over but the wait. Desormeaux
could barely take the wait.
“ In the paddock, he just walks around like the pony,” Desormeaux
said. “He blinks too long. He makes a slow blink. He’s walking around
in circles and looks like he’s going to go to sleep. I’m thinking, ‘Man,
he worked him today, damn.’ He made like eight turns. Felt like we were
there for eternity. It was the longest wait ever, then he comes by me and stomps
the ground about three times. Stomping.” Then he went out and stomped the
Preakness.
“ Wow. Wow. Wow. We’ve got a freak. And we’re coming home,” said
Dutrow after the Preakness. “Every time he’s run, he’s amazed
the people around him. Just a crazy, crazy, crazy horse. He walks over there
like he’s going to fall asleep and then he runs like that.”
Back at the test barn after the Preakness, Big Brown handled himself in his
usual manner. He was barely blowing as Nevin led him around the barn and Blum
pleaded with a Pimlico security guard to stop fans from using flash cameras.
Dallas Stewart, trainer of runner-up Macho Again, shook his head and laughed
at Blum.
“ Tell that horse to get used to it,” Stewart said. “He’s
going to see more than that if he’s going to win the Triple Crown.”
About that time, Big Brown stopped and stared as the horses walked over for
the 13th race. Not blowing. Not worried. Just staring across the horizon, looking
for what’s next.
