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June 7, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
If Big Brown Wins, Racing Loses
By PETER THOMAS FORNATALE
THIS afternoon, racing fans will be rooting for Big Brown to triumph in the Belmont Stakes and become the first horse since Affirmed in 1978 to win the Triple Crown. Many people in horse racing are particularly excited because they see Big Brown as a savior of a moribund industry with image problems.

But there’s at least one diehard racing fan who won’t be rooting for him: me. Yes, Big Brown is a magnificent animal whose efforts I can’t help but admire. But he also represents the worst aspects of the sport.

This might sound obvious, but it’s worth stating: horse racing is nothing without the horse. And yet right now the horse’s best interests don’t seem to be paramount in racing.

Big Brown’s main owner is not a venerable stable like the Phipps family’s or even a group of casual investors who bought a racehorse on a lark (like the old high school friends who went in on Funny Cide, the 2003 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner). Instead, his main owner is International Equine Acquisitions Holdings, whose stated purpose is to be an equine hedge fund that delivers profits to its investors by consistently racing winners. When you run your stable like a hedge fund, the horse becomes just another commodity to be bought and sold like a share of stock, with little concern for its fate.

This won’t, of course, be an issue for a horse of Big Brown’s ability — he has already been promised to the reputable Three Chimneys Stud Farm — but I worry about the less talented horses Equine Acquisitions owns.

Rooting for the firm and its co-president and public face, Michael Iavarone (who was fined and suspended in 1999 by the National Association of Securities Dealers for unauthorized trades and who was ordered to pay a judgment in 2003 for not paying for horses he bought at auction), would be validating a “win at any price” mentality.

Which brings us to the bigger problem. Equine Acquisitions’ former trainer, Greg Martin, had his license revoked in 2005 for using an illegal performance-enhancing drug on a company horse. Its current trainer, Richard Dutrow, is even more notorious for pushing the envelope. He has a list of violations longer than most anyone else’s in the history of the sport.

No one has seriously accused him of doing anything untoward with Big Brown, but he’s been fined or suspended for doping in each of the last eight years, including two instances in January. The Association of Racing Commissioners International report on Dutrow reveals 72 offenses since 1979, 13 of them related to drugs.

When a guy like this wins racing’s most prestigious prize, what message does that send to everyone else involved in the sport? It tells owners that they can win by entrusting their horses to a trainer known for bending the rules.

Even if he’s playing by the rules now with an extremely talented horse, it’s hard to believe that a trainer with as many violations as Dutrow could do right by all 110 horses in his barn.

Outside the United States, racing fans and horsemen and women are universally astounded by the amount of medication — legal and illegal — that horses receive here. It’s the single biggest problem facing the sport today. Although Equine Acquisitions grandly announced this week that Big Brown had skipped his May dose, he legally gets the anabolic steroid Winstrol monthly, whether he needs it or not. Steroids, in their proper, limited doses, may have legitimate therapeutic uses in horses. But they can also be a source of mischief — and racing doesn’t do anything to regulate their use.

And that’s to say nothing about the overuse of corticosteroids and painkillers that have ruined the lives of thousands of race horses by enabling them to run when they shouldn’t, causing irreparable injuries. Forget the illegal drugs; the legal ones are pretty awful, too.

I have nothing against Big Brown as a horse. If he does the job today, you can bet I’ll be among the hundred thousand strong at Belmont applauding him on his way back to the winner’s circle. I still fondly remember Silver Charm, who in 1997 was denied the Triple Crown at Belmont by Touch Gold deep in the stretch. I was devastated. I remember saying to a friend that night, “I feel like the Mets just lost the seventh game of the World Series.” But I just can’t root for Big Brown to become the first horse in 30 years to win the Triple Crown.

Some have argued that racing needs a Big Brown victory to prop itself up. True, if he wins, there will be several weeks or even months of attendant excitement.

But a Big Brown victory could make the fundamental problems of the sport even worse, encouraging other outfits to be as aggressive with the rules as the scarily named Equine Acquisitions is. Until we find ways to protect horses and make owners and trainers more accountable, the real problems aren’t going away.

No horse is going to save racing. Racing must first save itself — and for that reason, I’d rather see Big Brown lose.