Big Brown Versus Spectacular Bid
BB's Loose Shoe Against Bid's Safety Pin In the Belmont Stakes
Jul 12, 2008
The gray and the bay came to town with the Triple Crown on the line. Winning the Belmont Stakes would have clinched immortality for Spectacular Bid (1979) and Big Brown (2008). Their cases for winning the prestigious triple title were barely arguable. They were shoo-ins, pin-ups waiting to happen.
It Has to Go Perfectly -- Veitch
As Alydar trainer John Veitch has pointed out, winning the triple means everything went absolutely perfectly for the victorious individual. That was not the case for either Big Brown, or Spectacular Bid. Veitch lost with Alydar, who in any other day without Affirmed, would have been the 11th Triple Crown champion.
Veitch knew about absolute perfection because Alydar was just a tad short in all three races -- the only horse in history to finish second in all three contests -- even though he had defeated Affirmed twice in their two-year-old campaigns.
The two chestnuts fought each other off through the three classic races without Veitch, or Laz Barrera (winner Affirmed's trainer), ever bragging that he had the best horse.
Trainers Bud Delp and Rick Dutrow, Jr.
Richard Dutrow, Jr., Big Brown's conditioner, and Grover "Bud" Delp, Spectacular Bid's handler, were two peas in a pod as trainers with victorious expectations. Delp always referred to Bid as the best horse who ever looked through a bridle, a phrase that became part of horse racing lore, while Dutrow guaranteed BB's Triple Crown coronation because, he said, he had looked at the other horses around his mighty bay and found nothing comparable.
Their confident statements, however, fell silent to a loose shoe and a safety pin.
Triple Crown to Big Brown
Based on the circumstances Big Brown and Spectacular Bid faced in their Triple Crown attempts, Big Brown might have gotten to the line first ahead of Spectacular Bid. After all, he had a loose shoe, whereas Bid had stomped on a safety pin and bruised his foot prior to the race.
Brown and Gray coming around the final turn, Brown wide, Bid tucked closely behind, makes for a story book run. Bid could run from off the pace, or catch it at will. Brown has a turn of foot that is spectacular.
In addition, because young Bid jockey Ronnie Franklin didn't always know how to treat a horse, and Kent Desormeaux aboard Big Brown proved beyond a doubt that he does, when Desormeaux shakes the reins to cue Brown to his best, the bay's jet propulsion pushes the loose shoe ahead and leaves the gritty, gray Bid a sticking pin, short bid behind at the line.
