OLEAN -- Yes, I love horse racing, consider it a legitimate sport, often visit tracks in person during vacation time, and usually bet on the Triple Crown events, as I did this year. It could be genetic. My father loved horses -- as did his father before him -- and once drove a horse-drawn milk wagon as a teen.
That being said, here's my guess as to why national icon and mortal-lock Big Brown failed to win the Belmont Stakes last Saturday after appearing so dominant and masterful during the Kentucky Derby and Preakness runaways: Steroids.
Or, more precisely, lack of steroids.
In the weeks leading up to the possibility (make that probability) that Big Brown would become the first Triple Crown winner in three decades, the superhorse's outspoken and controversial trainer Rick Dutrow revealed the big and appealing equine athlete, as part of its routine substance regimen, received an anabolic steroid shot of Winstrol on the 15th of every month.
This is the same steroid substance and brand that broke my heart and my youngest son's a few years back when the great and previously cleancut Baltimore Orioles home run hitter Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for it, thus ending a great career and any chances he'll make the Hall of Fame.
Professional baseball, football, basketball and almost all American amateur sports organizations ban steroid use. This is because the substance imposes a serious health risk and unfairly enhances performance. There are currently 38 states with regulated horseracing, but only 10 of those currently ban the use of steroids in horses. Kentucky, Maryland and New York -- where the three legs of the Triple Crown occur -- are not among these states.
Horsemen try to put a pretty face on using steroids for their charges, including the enhancement of appetite and therefore all-around health, and the increase in stamina, which often overcomes the physical wear and tear on a horse involved in a racing campaign -- especially the grueling Triple Crown, which makes entrants run increasingly long distances three times over a short five-week period. A racehorse would routinely get at least twice the rest between races during a regular stakes race season.
But steroid use is controversial even among professional horsemen, because the real reason it is used is to promote rapid muscle growth in young horses -- the same reason professional human athletes use it illegally.
This is a real problem among thoroughbreds. It is a physiological miracle that more racehorses don't break their legs or suffer debilitating injury every race with almost half a ton of weight in furious athletic activity repeatedly placed on leg bones routinely thinner than a human teenager's.
Steroid use in horses exacerbates this problem by promoting muscle growth so fast it often overpowers the horse's already-stressed skeletal frame to the point it can't support it. This could be one reason we all get the impression we are seeing more catastrophic "breakdowns" in major nationally televised races (such as the heartbreaking Barbaro's, and Eight Belles' during recent Triple Crown races) than we used to.
Whether steroids played any role in Big Brown's outstanding early success, I'm not trained enough or educated enough on the subject to say, but he certainly looked like a horse on steroids. He was huge, beautifully muscled, and stood out among his competitors in imposing size, even during the hurly-burly of a race. He was obviously talented to a spectacular degree, and I prefer to think he would have won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness by at least a few lengths instead of several, even without recent Winstrol.
Professional horsemen will tell the television camera they are not using steroids to enhance performance, but in a sport that depends upon wagering for its very existence, and in which participants at every level are notorious for seeking any edge they can in competition -- hidden, obvious, legal, or illegal -- that is obvious gum-flapping.
As The New York Times accurately noted last week, it wasn't until Kentucky Republican congressman Ed Whitfield called a hearing recently and threatened to revoke federal approval of the lucrative simulcasting for off-track betting that the horse racing industry expressed any concern at all over the routine use of steroids.
Now, the governing Jockey Club Thoroughbred Safety Committee -- under the forceful scrutiny of Congress and fervid public remonstrations by animal protection groups against the dangers of horse racing -- has suddenly recommended a ban on steroid use for racing in all states by January. I believe that will happen.
Dutrow, Big Brown's trainer, got in front of that parade by announcing during the runup to the Belmont that his favorite had not received his scheduled May 15 shot of Winstrol. The cocky trainer's critics implied it was hubris on his part to admit that, and Dutrow implied he didn't want any shadow of drug assistance in Big Brown's forthcoming legend.
But jockey Kent Desormeaux's description of what it felt like to be on top of Big Brown was eerily familiar to parallel symptoms displayed by human athletes who've quit steroids -- sudden lack of energy, inexplicable desertion of strength, a seeming mental lethargy.
Big Brown was poised as usual to dominate, working quickly to the unimpeded outside at the first turn, but even in the early going, he appeared what track devotees call "rank," failing to achieve that trademark effortless stride and easy, beautiful gait.
At one point after the quarter pole, Big Brown ran right up the heels of eventual wire-to-wire winner Da' Tara, something the disciplined and responsive favorite -- termed by Desormeaux, who's ridden many champions, the best horse he's ever been aboard -- had never done in the past. Desormeaux knew immediately something was wrong: "I had no horse."
Big Brown ran completely out of gas at the 5/8-pole and fell an embarrassing 100 yards behind the rest of the pack. Desormeaux, a great jockey with a reputation for choking during previous Belmonts, is sure to draw criticism for it, but he did the right thing by "easing" the horse to a non-competitive gait by standing up in the stirrups -- a move he said was to avoid further possible injury.
As one of ABC's TV experts noted, what does it matter if you finish last by two lengths or by 100?
Upon post-race examination, the horse appeared fine. Even the newly stitched and laminated, and much publicized, quarter-crack in the left front hoof appeared intact. Veteran horsemen compared that injury -- televised ad nauseam in close-ups before the race -- to an equine "hang nail" that shouldn't have bothered Big Brown, but who knows what a horse is feeling, and where?
It could have been a combination of things. The Belmont is an exhausting mile-and-a-half, and Big Brown won the previous two races by several unnecessary lengths -- even though Dutrow insisted "he has plenty left" for the Belmont. The turns on that track are huge and unusually wide, placing a horse without experience there in an unusual frame of mind. Big Brown was a horse used to running in front when asked, and away from the rest of the pack.
At one point after the first furlong, he looked like -- as in the Derby and Preakness -- he was throwing himself into high gear with his trademark blaze of competitive glory, not knowing this was the longest race he'd ever attempted.
But Desormeaux strategically and correctly held him back, seeking to save needed energy for the marathon ahead. Perhaps Big Brown thought, "Well, screw that, they don't want me to run for real today." Who knows?
To me, the horse looked like he actually ran out of break on the back side. My hunch is further medical tests (possibly by the time you read this) on Big Brown may reveal lung congestion and some bleeding there, another human symptom of sudden withdrawal from steroids.
Here's another prediction: The Belmont was Big Brown's last race.
His owners and Dutrow had hinted they might run him in the late-summer Travers at Saratoga, and then in the Breeders Cup Classic at Santa Anita in October, to prove he was better then the great performer Curlin.
But Big Brown is already under contract to stand stud at Kentucky's beautiful Three Chimneys breeding farm -- a prospect estimated by some thoroughbred experts to be worth anywhere between $60 million and $200 million for his owners.
Nobody's going to risk that kind of sure thing in what seems to be an increasingly dangerous sport.
On another subject ...
Am I the only TV watcher who blows his stack every time the networks slap a distracting promotion lineup on the screen during regular programming?
I find this superimposing of time and title for upcoming shows smack in the middle of prominent screen space -- which on NBC, at least, seems to occur all the time these days during prime scheduling -- to be absolutely maddening.
I don't give a flying fig to learn a dozen times during a half-hour that "Nashville Stars" or "Celebrity Circus" is coming to my television set soon, even though I may watch those shows -- the first because I love country music, and the second because I think I'd enjoy seeing publicity hound B-list celebrities crack a kneecap or two trying to perform some harebrained physical feats way beyond their athletic ability and physical prowess.
I can always look up the scheduled time in the newspaper or with two button clicks on the TV remote. I'm not sure why this imposition of involuntary information torques me off so. Perhaps it's my advanced age and the fond remembrance of earlier days in the developing TV Generation when network executives who knew what they were doing kept news and entertainment separate from each other, and mindless promotion and publicity separate from both. Now, it's intrusive money-grubbing 24/7.
In those innocent times, the screen belonged to the viewer. If an ad was clever enough to hold viewer interest during a break in the show, so be it. If not, you headed for the bathroom or the refrigerator, and the advertiser's failure to keep your eyeballs glued to the screen showed up in the purchase reaction and the advertiser's bottom line.
Same with promotion. Network advertising and promotions comprised a sort of necessary nuisance -- something that paid the freight and kept the system going, but not the main attraction.
Now it's upside down. During one stretch of evening primetime viewing last week, NBC actually threw both of the above promo lines on the screen while the program was taking place -- either side, midway up -- and kept them there for about 15 seconds, completely obliterating what you were trying to watch. I turned off the tube in disgust and settled down with a good book.
I'm not railing here about "product placement" -- in which big advertisers and show sponsors place their product smack in the middle of the action or background. My old outfit, USA Today, became a master at that (and paid a tidy sum for the placement) during the early years of its existence in the 1980s, when anytime movie or TV producers needed a newspaper box on the sidewalk for reality purposes, the familiar blue-and-white USA Today dispenser appeared in the background. Today, that practice is a big income item for the industry and production company.
The detective who pulls up to a crime scene and pops out of a Buick doesn't exit that particular car by happenstance, you know. But at least this ad-promo practice has a reality to it, fits into the plot and doesn't severely intrude on the viewer's consciousness.
This new trend of repetitious and prominent promo line display is all part of a more pronounced reliance on "subliminal" perceptual theory -- that the viewer of an incessantly displayed ad or promo will soon learn to blank it out or ignore it, yet through repeated forced viewing retain the essence of the material.
You can see a somewhat different version if you closely inspect glossy magazine liquor ads (or sometimes perfume pushing) in which the liquid product is being poured from a container or swirled about in crystal. In order to leave you with the psychological impression -- of which you are generally unaware -- that the product is "sexy" or "romantic" or "enticing" or "appealing" the liquid, upon intense scrutiny, will reveal a naked woman, or male hunk, or beautiful face.
Memo to network poohbahs: Keep the TV screen -- during entertainment time or news time -- void of promotion. If you want to promote some show, do it honestly by eating up your own time. Return the screen to the viewer.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | June 10 2008 |