Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The Outside Course!

You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features!

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Let's Go BIG BROWN!!!!!!!!! All fans weight in here!
Topic Started: May 18 2008, 05:52 AM (414 Views)
virginiabred
Member Avatar
Thomas H. Cruise!
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
I don't know about the rest of you but I'm thrilled we may have a Triple Crown this year. I'm gonna cross every finger and tow, say a prayer and jingle like crazy that he makes the next one!!!

Awesome horse and I honestly think he has what it takes.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
AC & Ty
Member Avatar
Shunnnnn the unbeliever. Shunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.
[ *  *  *  *  * ]
I just watched the replay...because i missed it....because I was painting the stupid f****** jumps for my horse show this f****** weekend...and ARGHHHHHH!!!!!

I MISSED IT!

I am very, very excited....and I am hoping beyond all belief that I get to see this in my lifetime!!!! :luck:

GO BIG BROWN!!!!! :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :cheer: :cheer: :cheer:
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
virginiabred
Member Avatar
Thomas H. Cruise!
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writ...tml?eref=sircrc

Validation for Big Brown, sport

BALTIMORE -- There was a sustained roar, equal parts exultation and relief, as Big Brown pulled away from his rivals in the Preakness at Pimlico on Saturday. Here was validation, not just for a colt who looks to be by far the best of his generation -- who now heads to the Belmont with a real chance to win the first Triple Crown in 30 years -- but also for a venerable sport that has spent the last two weeks defending itself against charges of animal cruelty. Big Brown's 5 ¼-length win did nothing to erase the horrible memory of the death of the filly Eight Bells in the Kentucky Derby, but by its very dominance, it did serve as a shining example of why the game is still played.

All week at Pimlico, the buzz around the race had been less about the prospects for a Triple Crown, than about the concern that the 133rd Preakness might feature another fatal breakdown. The fate of Eight Bells had occasioned broad calls for reform and regulation, all of which seemed to be building to a crescendo as post-time loomed on Saturday. Both ESPN and NBC conducted roundtable discussions about what was wrong with the sport and what could be done to save it, and the animal-rights group PETA showed up (albeit just 22 strong) to protest.

Enter Big Brown, who has now delivered three straight overpowering performances against the best three-year-olds in the country. If the quality of the 11 other horses he defeated on Saturday was mediocre, that was only because he has already beaten just about everybody worth beating. And in the Preakness, he beat his opponents with something very like arrogance. Jockey Kent Desormeaux had only to put on an exhibition of minimalist riding, never going to the whip and only urging his mount to run for about 100 yards -- all the room he needed to dismiss his fading rivals as the field entered the stretch. As Big Brown passed under the wire, Desormeaux had already wrapped up on him, saving some of the colt's energy for the mile and a half Belmont on June 7.

That's not to say the triumph was easy. If not for the quality of his rivals, you could make the case that Big Brown's victory was more impressive than his trouble-free win in Kentucky two weeks ago. On Saturday, the colt broke poorly, got stuck along the rail early and made contact with another horse while entering the backstretch. But he never flinched, a remarkable feat for a horse making just the fifth start of his short life. Those in racing who have been praying for a super horse may have been granted their wish.

So dominant has the colt been that his trainer, Richard Dutrow, isn't shy about expressing his confidence, which at times borders on outright arrogance. Dutrow spent the week before the Derby telling everybody in Louisville that he didn't see how his horse could lose, and he spent the moments immediately after the Preakness disparaging both the field, saying "there weren't any good horses," as well as a future rival. Of Casino Drive, the Japanese-owned colt who won the Peter Pan Stakes last weekend and looks like a serious threat to spoil Brownie's crown, Dutrow offered this analysis: "I don't think he can beat our horse. All the Japanese people who are coming here think Godzilla's dead. Well, they're going to find out he's not dead."

But in the giddiness of the victory, there were reminders of issues that are not going away any time soon. Hours before the race, IEAH Stables, the outfit that owns Big Brown, sold his syndication rights to Three Chimneys Farm. Robert Clay, who runs the Lexington, Ky., breeding operation wouldn't divulge the terms of the deal, but speculation at the track was that it was for around $50 million. With all that money on the line, it is highly unlikely that Big Brown will race again after the Belmont. Neither the owners nor the farm can risk losing that kind of money because of injury.

And so racing will probably only have three more weeks to admire its newest superstar. And after he is gone, the game will still have to deal with the problems that the death of Eight Belles put squarely in the spotlight: the weakening of the thoroughbred breed through inbreeding, the use of performance enhancing substances and the dilemma presented by the presence of synthetic racing surfaces. Outcry or no, these problems will not go away in a month or a year or five years.

Still, it was nice to focus on racing for a moment. And this was racing at its highest level. Big Brown left no doubt about that. Another Triple Crown may finally be at hand.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
virginiabred
Member Avatar
Thomas H. Cruise!
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Standing in Big Brown's way: Casino Drive

He had just catapulted himself to the brink of becoming only the 12th Triple Crown winner in history with a jaw-dropping move at the top of the final turn yesterday - a shock-and-awe blast of speed that turned the 133rd running of the Preakness Stakes from a jumbled field into a one-horse jailbreak, and left even his stubbornest rivals proclaiming his greatness.

As a result, only one more test remains for Big Brown when he returns to New York to run in three weeks.

A Kentucky-born but Japanese-trained horse named Casino Drive stands in the way. He's been lying in wait at Belmont for weeks now, and represents the perfect mix of mystery and bloodlines and danger to make this one of the most hotly anticipated final legs of the Triple Crown in history. And Rick Dutrow, Big Brown's wisecracking, straight-talking trainer, knows it.



Minutes after yesterday's race, Dutrow already was banging the drums like some modern Barnum when someone mentioned Casino Drive's name.

"I believe he can't beat our horse. All the Japanese people are going to find out when they come here, they thought Godzilla was dead.

"He's not dead!" Dutrow crowed.

"Monster" and "freak" are just some of the names, along with hometown favorite, that will be endlessly applied to unbeaten Big Brown in the next three weeks after the astonishing way the Aqueduct-based colt bolted away from the field at the top of the final turn at Pimlico. It was as if, in that instant, anyway, the other horses were nailed down in place.

Big Brown showed the sort of gear only the greats seem able to summon. And sometimes, like yesterday, it seems to come from nowhere. Just when you think even a super horse like Big Brown has hit top stride, he finds more to not just win but demolish the field - and somehow look effortless doing it.

Yesterday's race at a mile and three-sixteenths, which Big Brown covered in 1:54.80, was like that. Though Big Brown won by 5 1/4 lengths against a field that looked even weaker in defeat than it did on the racing form, there was still no denying the history-making potential he showed.

Casino Drive, though he has raced only twice, already looks like the best colt Big Brown will face in his career. Because like Big Brown, those first two results announced him as special. The first was a 11 1/2-length victory in his first start in Japan; the second came eight days ago, a 5¾-length romp in the Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont.

Unlike Big Brown, Casino Drive will be well-rested when they meet. Kazuo Fujisawa, Japan's leading trainer in 2006 and 2007, thought enough of the horse to start pointing him to the Belmont in February, in part because he believed Casino Drive's bloodlines demanded it. He's the brother of the last two Belmont Stakes winners, the filly Rags to Riches and Jazil. It will mark the first horse Fujisawa has brought to America since 1995.

As if that wasn't enough intrigue, the man who rode Casino Drive to that thunderclap victory in the Peter Pan Stakes is Kent Desormeaux, the same jockey who has guided Big Brown through this Triple Crown campaign. For the past two days, Desormeaux has been saying he sees no one getting in the way of a Big Brown-Casino Drive finish atop the board.

But lightly raced Casino Drive still has something to prove. Horesmen such as Dallas Stewart, trainer of yesterday's second-place finisher Macho Again, are unequivocal now about Big Brown.

"A superstar," Stewart said.

"A monster," jockey Julien Leparoux agreed.

Desormeaux said as he and Big Brown spun around the final curve, he could sense that the other riders on either side of him were trying to rate and position their horses to burst into the stretch, so he told himself, "This is the perfect time to set sail."

"I looked back under my arm one more time before I asked him to run," Desormeaux said, "and I asked him to go. Then I looked between my legs and I saw they were eight lengths behind me."

Laughing, Desormeaux added, "I thought, 'That's enough.'"

Just like that, a trip that didn't start smoothly for Big Brown, with the big bay colt slipping and needing a second lunge off his hind legs to get out of the gate, didn't matter. Perhaps for a lesser horse, it might have. But not him.

Big Brown and his New York connections are coming home to run for immortality.

Dutrow, smiling broadly, said after what he saw at Churchill Downs and Pimlico, "I don't think I'm afraid of anything."
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Fenway
Member Avatar
Guiding your way to Candy Mountain, since 1873.
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
He certainly has been impressive. Turning into the stretch you could just tell that he was going to power away from the rest of the field...and he did! :clap:
I'd LOVE to see a TC winner! (But I'm not going to say any more because I'll jinx him <_< )
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
virginiabred
Member Avatar
Thomas H. Cruise!
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Come on people! Where is the fan base for this amazing animal??? :unsure:
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
RNB
Member Avatar
Guiding your way to Candy Mountain, since 1873.
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
*RNB jumping up and down waving her arms* Me, me, me!!!!!! :clap: :cheer: :one:
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
gunnar
Member Avatar
You're BANNED!
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
virginiabred
May 20 2008, 08:00 AM
Come on people! Where is the fan base for this amazing animal??? :unsure:

I am too scared to watch or root for him but he seems like a great horse! I will watch the highlights after it is over only! :,( Sorry! :lonely:
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
jonquilTN
Member Avatar
We're on a bridge, Chaaaaaaaaarlie!
[ *  *  *  * ]
ANother Big Brown fan here! I'm with ya VB!

I truly think this horse has the heart and the talent to be the next Triple Crown winner. Now if his feetsies can hold up...that's a whoooooole other story.

Will be watching with a hopeful heart and keeping all appendages crossed that it's just a "clean" race and no tragedies.

-JTN
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
DairyQueen2049
Member Avatar
DRAGON BREATH. DRAGGIN' BUTT
[ *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  * ]
I've been seeing his feet on photos on the net. :,( :,( :,( :,( :,(

Sorry, I watched Ruffian crash and burn. :rose: :candle: Some awful soul sent me the vid of Eight Belles, :spew: and after all the Event horse losses plus Teddy O - I can't muster the enthusiasum for a horse that should not run with a quarter crack and his glued on feet. :no: :no:

Run for what? Money. :pissed: :pissed: For the owners. His feet are awful. so they plan to breed him to reproduce those awful feet. :shoot: :shoot: :shoot: Who cares if hes lame and crippled for life if he is a triple crown winner? *I* do. I think its wrong to be allowed to run an animal with feet in the shape his are in. :no: :,( :,( :,( :,( :no: :no:

Can't muster the enthusiasum, sure that there will be another crash and burn - if not now, his offspring with their genetically messed up feet. :,( :,( :,( :,( :,( :,( :,( :,( :,( :,( :,(
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Join the millions that use us for their forum communities. Create your own forum today.
« Previous Topic · The Competitive Edge · Next Topic »
Add Reply