Tomorrow Big Brown will step onto Belmont racetrack and take a shot at ending the 30-year dearth of Triple Crown winners. Quite a few have come close especially in the last decade. But no horse bred today has the endurance and durability to win a series of races that are a holdover from a different time, when racing was more about strength and speed rather than speed at all costs.Big Brown has better, stronger breeding than most. But still. The odds and reality are against him. My wish for Big Brown is pretty simple: don't fall down, big guy. Walk off the track. Winning the Triple Crown would be a bonus, but it's not the main thing.
I was a lucky kid. I grew up in an age of equine royalty. From 1970 to 1980 ran some of the best racehorses of the century. Three Triple Crown winners from 1973 to 1978, and Secretariat, 'Big Red,' was king of the crop, second coming of Man O'War, (the original Big Red). Look at him, exploding out of the gate at the 1973 Preakness like a big red rocketship. I fell in love with him then and love him still nearly 20 years after he went to that big paddock in the sky. Secretariat's Triple Crown was absolute fairy tale. We were spoiled by it, and by the apparent ease with which Seattle Slew and Affirmed won in 1977 and 1978.
Just like landing on the moon, people took it for granted that it was easy, that the Triple Crown was a cakewalk. Just like the Apollo moon shots, when it was over, it was over. We haven't been back to the moon since 1972, and now it's been 30 years since Affirmed beat Alydar by a nostril to win the Triple Crown. (Hard-running, hard-luck Alydar, who ran second in all three races and would have won in any other year.)
Tomorrow afternoon the speculation will be over for another year, and my bet is on another failed bid. It's realism, with a dash of cynicism. Big Brown is no Big Red. I'll be happy for him if he wins. But I'll be happiest if he walks off the track on his own four feet, even if he comes in dead last.
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