Desormeaux’s Decision Was Better for Sport Than a Triple Crown
In a Triple Crown season that began with the unforgettably tragic Kentucky Derby death of Eight Belles and ended with a stupefying Belmont Stakes _ both of which raised serious questions about the entire horse racing industry, even as the industry was hoping a Big Brown sweep could lift its tattered image _ Big Brown jockey Kent Desormeaux added a grace note Saturday that was left too buried in the shock over Saturday’s outcome.
Desormeaux knew Big Brown wasn’t himself. He didn’t seem to want to run. So rather than push him on a 96-degree day on which he was also racing on a repaired hoof, Desormeaux did the best thing for the horse _ not himself or his connections, not their ambition to be only the 12th Triple Crown winner in history. Desormeaux pulled up Big Brown a half mile from the finish.
“This is the best horse I’ve ever been on,” Desormeaux explained. “Something was wrong, so I took care of him.”
Desormeaux was admittedly “numb” as he spoke. He had another chance to sweep the Triple Crown 10 years earlier on another terrific horse named Real Quiet, and he lost not by a head or even a nose. “By a lip,” Desormeaux said, the sting still fresh.
But this near-miss was different. “This will not eat at me,” Desormeaux promised.
And now, maybe what happened to Big Brown at the Belmont and the breakdown and euthanization of Eight Belles at the Derby before that, won’t merely mark the end of another Triple Crown season. It will mark a new liftoff point for a sport that has not only lost its foothold in the American imagination, but lost its way a bit, as well.
Eight Belles’ death from two shattered ankles raised valid questions about the way horses are bred now for speed over soundness, and how they’re asked to run fast as mere 2-year-olds but also have the inbred stamina for the classic races later in their careers.
“You’re asking for two different things,” said Steve Cauthen, the jockey for 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed and now a breeder. “I think it makes the horses susceptible to the injuries.”
Such entrenched breeding practices and the financial rewards in play will take great will to unravel.
But many of the questions that were reignited by Big Brown’s mysterious fade Saturday, and by his trainer Rick Dutrow’s near-grab of Triple Crown immortality should not be as hard to resolve.
Big Brown’s desultory performance immediately spiked questions about whether the supposed stoppage of his usual legal monthly injection of the steroid Winstrol somehow contributed to his absent finishing kick in the Belmont. (Emphasis on “supposed” stoppage because during the three-week wait for the Belmont, Dutrow said Big Brown did _ no, didn’t _ get steroids since May. So it’s hard to know what to believe.)
Larry Bramlage, the respected veternarian who worked the Belmont Stakes on Saturday and spoke out forcefully for reforms after Eight Belles’ death, said he doubted that stopping Big Brown’s monthly dosage of steroids contributed to his poor performance, given the short time involved.
This much is clear: Even in a sport with liberal drug rules _ in the United States, unlike Europe, steroids and painkillers can be legally administered to horses in training, sometimes even on race day _ Dutrow is a prolific serial offender.
He’s certainly not the only one. But it’s telling that even in a sport in which there’s honor among thieves, a significant segment of the racing crowd was rooting for Dutrow to lose Saturday rather than prevail after being slapped with suspensions each of the last seven years, and sanctions at least 72 times overall since 2000, 13 of them for drug-related issues.
Even before Saturday’s shocker, there was already a move within horse racing and Congress to ban steroids in all states and limit drug use in general. Those efforts should gain impetus now.
That’s why Desormeaux’s gesture of pulling up Big Brown was so terrific and too important to overlook. He put the horse before everything despite the glory at stake, and the sharp questions or scorn he risked facing.
But Desormeaux grew up in Louisiana, racing a Shetland pony against an older brother who would fling open the barn gate, then race them on foot. He’s a guy who used to ride around as a kid jockey to bush- league tracks in the Deep South in the back of the horse trailer with the horse, not up in the truck cab with the horse’s trainer.
Desormeaux can still remember the first day he got to exercise thoroughbreds rather than just quarter horses. “The first one’s name? I exercised the whole barn that first day that they let me,” Desormeaux said the other day, laughing at himself. He remembers thinking, “Thoroughbreds move like liquid.”
He knew Big Brown wasn’t moving like that Saturday. So he did the right thing. He took care of the horse.
Only more gestures like that will “save” horse racing. No Triple Crown winner can.
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