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.