ELMONT, N.Y. - Hi, I’m Big Brown. And I have some explaining to do.
A lot of people showed up at Belmont Park on Saturday expecting me to pull a Secretariat.
Instead I pulled a fast one. Well, actually it was a slow one.
I finished about 89 lengths behind Da’ Tara or Da’ Toro or whatever the winner’s name was. Now everybody’s wondering who was that horse who started from the post position?
“Obviously, he wasn’t Big Brown,” Nick Zito said.
I appreciate the sentiment from the winning trainer, but that really was me. I’m not exactly sure why I turned into Big Clown.
Was it my cracked hoof? Could I not take the heat? Did I lose my home-run swing after missing my monthly steroid shot?
Speculation is running amok, which is more than I can say for myself on Saturday. The veterinarians have been all over my body, looking for clues. Frankly, I think they might be looking in the wrong place.
I think it might have been in my head. I was going to lose it if I had to listen to Rick crow about winning the Triple Crown.
That’s my trainer, Rick Dutrow Jr., for those of you who haven’t heard. And if you haven’t heard Rick, you haven’t been within 100 miles of a horsetrack in the past month.
Yak, yak, yak. The guy’s mouth was running so fast you’d swear he was sired by Don King via Native Dancer.
He called my competition “a bunch of clowns.” He guaranteed I’d win Saturday’s race. Every morning I’d pick up the paper and have to read something like this:
“No one is going to catch him. I can’t wait. There’s no way in the world there’s any horse that’s doing any better than Big Brown. That’s impossible.”

azcentral.com

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. — In May 2003, he was THE horse, winner of the Kentucky Derby, showered with media attention, roses and glory.
Today, he is the most famous stable pony at any racetrack in the country.
Unlike other recent Derby winners, Funny Cide — a gelding — wasn’t rushed to stud duty after his 3-year-old season. Instead, he continued racing until last year, when he was retired at age 7.
Now, his job is to carry trainer Barclay Tagg or assistant Robin Smullen as they accompany active racers to and from morning workouts — and the “Funny Cide” saddle towel is all that signals the uninformed that they are in the presence of a champion.
“That’s probably a first and a last, for the winner of the Kentucky Derby,” said Hall of Fame trainer and Lexington, Ky., native Shug McGaughey.
A gelding hadn’t won the Derby since Clyde Van Dusen in 1929 until Funny Cide claimed the garland of roses five years ago at odds that paid $27.60 on a $2 win bet.
After he won by more than nine lengths in the Preakness Stakes, the racing world harbored high hopes that Funny Cide could become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.
But he finished third in the Belmont Stakes after dueling with eventual winner Empire Maker.
In the years after that, Funny Cide remained a fan favorite — he won every year he raced, except when he was injured at 5, with victories in the Jockey Club Gold Cup, the Dominion Day Stakes and in the last race of his career, the $100,000 Wadsworth Memorial at Finger Lakes.
“We kind of reached a point where we said, ‘What more can he do for us?’ ” said Jack Knowlton, managing partner for Funny Cide’s owners, the Sackatoga Stable group known for riding to the 2003 Derby in a yellow school bus.

courier-journal.com