No Triple Crown | Da' Tara upsets Big Brown

ELMONT, N.Y. — It was supposed to be the day a proud but tattered old sport was to be suspended in a state of pure beauty and awe. Big Brown, a 5-for-5 colt who had crushed all comers, was supposed to run off with the 140th Belmont Stakes and be anointed on Saturday as the 12th Triple Crown champion — and the first since Affirmed had swept the series for 3-year-olds in 1978.

Big Brown's trainer, Rick Dutrow Jr., had said so. No, he had guaranteed it, saying last week Big Brown's victory in the 1-½-mile Test of the Champion, as the Belmont Stakes is known, was a "foregone conclusion." So, when jockey Kent Desormeaux approached the final turn and asked Big Brown to engage those booster rockets that had powered him to victory in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, a hot and sweaty crowd of 94,476 stood and roared, anticipating he would zoom past the grandstand and into immortality.

Instead, nothing happened. Big Brown spun his wheels, unable to make up a single step on Da' Tara, who had one victory in seven starts and was sent off at 38-1 odds. Big Brown was done, finished, through at 3-10 odds. Desormeaux eased his mount, guided him to the outside and loped him the final half-mile home.

"I had no horse," he said. "There's no popped tires — he's just out of gas."

Alan Garcia rode Da' Tara to a gate-to-wire victory in the relatively slow time of 2 minutes, 29.65 seconds. Backers of Da' Tara, a son of Tiznow and the mare Torchera, were rewarded with $79 for each $2 bet to win. And Da' Tara's trainer, Hall of Famer Nick Zito, once more proved a giant killer. In 2004, his colt Birdstone thwarted the Triple Crown bid of Smarty Jones at 36-1.

"I salute Big Brown," Zito said. "He's still a champion. He wasn't himself today, and we took advantage of it."

Da' Tara, who was 23 ½ lengths behind Big Brown at the end of the March 29 Florida Derby, finished 5-¼ lengths in front of runner-up Denis of Cork in the $1 million Belmont. Ready's Echo and Zito-trained Anak Nakal were in a dead heat for third.

What happened to Big Brown?

Was it the smothering, 96-degree heat? The quarter crack on his left-front foot that kept him from the racetrack for three days?

"He was in no way, shape or form lame or sore," Desormeaux said.

Larry Bramlage, the on-call veterinarian for the American Association of Equine Practitioners, agreed. "When he pulled up, the doctor on the racetrack looked at him and there was obviously nothing wrong," Bramlage said. "I was watching him when he came down the stretch, and he was not showing any lameness."

Could Big Brown have had an adverse reaction to Dutrow's decision to discontinue the use of anabolic steroids, which he said he did April 15?

"I doubt if that comes up to be the answer, because it's not that kind of situation where it's going to be a stimulant for him," Bramlage said.

Perhaps the racing gods tired of the comments from the brash and irrepressible Dutrow and decided that no matter how talented a colt Big Brown was, there was no room in the pantheon of greats for a such a boastful trainer.

"The horse kind of looks fine to me," Dutrow said as darkness settled on this grand old racetrack on Long Island. "I'm sure it's not the horse's fault, so there's nothing to be down on him."

The colt's co-owner, Michael Iavarone of International Equine Acquisitions Holdings, had completed a deal three weeks earlier, selling Big Brown's stallion rights to Three Chimneys Farm near Midway, Ky.

IEAH officials had already declared Big Brown was not going to run next year. They expected to pop champagne Saturday, celebrating that they owned the only living Triple Crown winner — worth perhaps $120 million in the breeding shed.

Instead, they are in the same place 10 other previous owners since Affirmed have found themselves: heartbroken and without a Triple Crown. They have the first of the 19 beaten Triple Crown contenders to finish last in the Belmont.

Big Brown was supposed to enter the equine stratosphere, alongside Triple Crown winners Sir Barton, Gallant Fox, Omaha, War Admiral, Whirlaway, Count Fleet, Assault, Citation, Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed. Big Brown was supposed to bring magic back to the sport.

Perhaps he did. Desormeaux marveled at the 11 Triple Crown champions.

"Maybe it was the foot," he said of Big Brown. "Who knows? I was talking in the jockey room and I can't fathom what kind of freaks those 11 Triple Crown winners were."