Here's my reaction to what was going on with Big Brown and his connections, including the syndicate ownership and his trainer:
1. A horse that isn't properly conditioned will not win at a mile and a half. In the long-ago past, I conditioned horses for eventing, and learned that while you might be able to get away with "just talent" for a small event, anything that requires stamina also requires careful conditioning. The TC has always been a tough balance between keeping the horse fresh and keeping the horse conditioned -- but not to condition at all between races with appropriate speed work, etc., is ridiculous. If the horse's hooves can't stand appropriate work, then wishful thinking about conditioning won't suffice either.
2. Blowhard trainers who constantly take shortcuts eventually lose.
3. Steroids fool athletes and trainers into believing they "really are so good" they don't need the drugs, don't need to be conditioned, etc. (We've seen this same lesson learned the hard way in track and field, baseball and the Tour de France -- so why would we need to learn it once again in horse racing? The happy bliss of human ignorance, I guess.) When I heard that Big Brown had been on steroids (and of course the mysterious "vitamins" tubed into him) until the Derby, that he wasn't being worked at speed between the TC races, and then when I saw him walk almost flat footed between saddle-up and gate, I thought, this horse just isn't on the muscle for this race, whether due to the absence of the chemicals in his body, or the heat, or the lack of conditioning, or a combination. The trainer had started believing his own BS, always a dangerous proposition in the racing world.
I'm sorry that Big Brown didn't win, because I would have liked to see a TC winner (and unlike some, I like Desmoreaux), but in the long run, I'm glad that if Big Brown's "talent" to date was more a product of steriods and luck than breeding and innate will to run, his connections weren't rewarded for "their" bad behavior.
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