Full of Run

Any of this sound familiar?

There’s a striking young colt who’s really getting some attention heading into this year’s Kentucky Derby. He’s a long-striding horse who has only started three times because of some nagging injuries. After his maiden win (by approximately 12 lengths), a majority interest in him was purchased for about $3.5M, with his original owners retaining about a quarter interest. After a change of trainer and jockey, he won his second start handily and dispensed with ease Grade 1 rivals in his most recent start. This colt can rate off the pace or simply run his competition into submission. His stride is so big, and he is so fast, that he often comes wide off the final turn. Questions are now floating around as to wehter it is possible to imagine a horse actually winning the Kentucky Derby with only 3 lifetime starts.

Curlin? You ask? Good guess. I could have easily written that paragraph after Curlin’s romp in the 2007 Arkansas Derby. Instead, I am writing it after Big Brown’s triumph in the 2008 Florida Derby. Starting from post 12 (which had produced exactly ZERO winners at the 1 1/8 Mile distance since Gulfstream’s reconfiguration) Big Brown broke for the lead, sailed through a 1/4 mile in 22.76 seconds, a 1/2 mile in 45 and change, 3/4ths in under 1:11, and he kept going and going and going. I, like everyone else, was waiting for him to run out of gas. He never did. The teletimer stopped just .36 of a second off the track record and the Beyer figure came back at 106. By far the fastest 2 turn Derby prep this year and a full second faster than Barbaro’s winning time in 2006.

The boards immediately lit up with people trying to tell me that I did not see what I had just seen. The track was manipulated, the trainer juiced the horse, there was a sun spot, Coke changed to Pepsi….you name it. Some people spend their entire lives telling other people how great horses AREN’T. I guess they are right more often than not, but what a sad, joyless existence. They cannot fully enjoy what I present to you now; total domination.

Ladies and gentlemen, Big Brown…Big BAD Brown.

Full of Run is my Horse Racing Blog. Simple as that. It’s inspiration, however, is as deep as deep gets.

You’ll notice that the header for Full of Run is a photo of Barbaro turning for home in the 2006 Kentucky Derby. I decided on  that image and the title Full of Run because that is how I choose to remember him; nostrils flaring as he leaves all rivals in the wake of his powerful strides as he charges down the long Churchill Downs stretch. Barbaro’s lasting contribution to the Sport of Kings may be the world-wide attention his subsequent injury and doomed recovery brought to laminitis, but I remember him like he is in the photo; full of run.

The last quarter mile of the 2006 Derby is forever stored on the hard drive of my mind. I was (and still am) convinced that I was witnessing the horse. This 3 year-old son of Dynaformer was going to do “it.”  He was going to end a going-on-thirty-year drought of Triple Crown Winners.

As I stood in front of the TV, barely hearing Tom Durkin calling the race, I began to repeat over and over, “He’s in hand! He’s in HAND!!” I have no idea if the people with me had any idea what that meant exactly, but I am sure they got my meaning. Barbaro crossed the finish line 8+ lengths in front and in a canter. He had soundly defeated a crop of three-year-olds that had earlier in the week been desribed as one of the best ever. “There are seven or eight Smarty Jones’s in this field,” I remember commentator Frank Lyons stating. There was, in fact, a future Belmont Stakes winner and runner up (Jazil and Bluegrass Cat) and a future Eclipse Winner of Champion Older Horse honors (Lawyer Ron). A good portion of the rest of the field were no slouches, either. Barbaro beat them all and made it looks easy.

History will tell the complete story of Barbaro. I, however, will forever tell the story of that first Saturday in May when a colt raced himself into my heart. Thanks to Barbaro my heart is, and forver shall be, full of run.

Big Brown