NEW YORK — He awoke early, munched a light breakfast and a postprandial peppermint and then slipped out a back entrance into the warm New York sunshine for a morning constitutional.
Only months ago, he had been a relative unknown, a young athlete of modest success and largely untested promise. But two races had changed all that, likely forever.
The press tracked him everywhere now, even here, about 30 kilometres from the city, as he ambled down a muddy, tree-lined path, flanked by a dozen security guards. A brood of ill-tempered roosters clucked at him as he passed and he could hear the staccato clicks of the cameras, the photographers whispering his name in a kind of awed reverence, coaxing him to linger an extra second or two for a better shot.
He hadn’t yet learned the celebrity’s aversion to the paparazzi. In fact, he had always been intrigued by the attention. So he obliged, pausing within earshot of a couple of women who loitered at the entrance to the track, tittering over his physique – the sinewy shoulders, the riffle of his legs, the corded neck sloping into a broad sweep of back.
He took it all in his typically liquid stride, sauntering onto the oval, where several of his more skittish rivals had already assembled for a brief workout. Some strolled, others circled in a kind of lazy jog, and a few whirred past in a tangle of limbs and colours. But he preferred, to the chagrin of his newer fans, to stand off to one side for several minutes, surveying the scene.
His “connections,” as they call them in the business, would no doubt say he was scoping the competition and visualizing his upcoming race.
But Big Brown is just a horse. How could he know that he is on the verge of history, that if he reaches the winner’s circle Saturday afternoon at the Belmont Stakes – at a full mile and a half, the most gruelling of thoroughbred contests – he will become the first winner of the Triple Crown (winning the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont) since Affirmed in 1978?

globesports.com