I love alliteration. Anyway, over the course of the past few weeks, there have been a ton of theories as to what happened the day of the Belmont. There is some new information that leads to a possible explanation for Big Brown's Triple Crown loss. Upon leaving the gate, another horse (Guadalcanal) stepped on Big Brown's right rear (there's that alliteration again) hoof. Slow motion of the video shows BB jerked his head as Guadalcanal stepped on his foot, and BB's shoe came loose. As apparently happens sometimes, the horse often steps on the shoe and drives the nail right back into his hoof. This is nothing new. A new picture has surfaced, however, of Big Brown running into the final stretch with the shoe still hanging off. This would mean that he ran the entire race with a shoe dangling off and possibly with a nail digging into his foot. Was this enough to cripple him? Of course not. But it certainly would be enough to annoy him, throw off his stride, piss him off, and irritate him to the point of not wanting to keep running. It's also absolutely possible that it had no effect whatsoever, and he just wasn't feelin' it that day. We'll never know.
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2 comments:
I don't entirely agree that "we'll never know".
We may never know the exact, but when he runs again, we'll know all we need to. Was Belmont an aberration or was that all the horse he was.
TvNB
I think it was an aberration. Even so, even if he continues to run great for the rest of his career, we'll never know why did didn't run well on that particular day. We can only speculate. If he continues to run poorly for the next two or three races, then maybe the Derby & Preakness were the exception, but I don't see that happening.
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