Just Accepting It All

Just a few minutes ago, and two days after the race where Big Brown didn't show up (even though he was there), I just came to terms with everything.

Again, I blew my dough on a Triple Crown race and again, I didn't care one bit when I saw Kent Desormeaux pull up Big Brown. I was terrified that my hypothetical scenario from NYSPI's virgin post would be prophetic.

Luckily, Big Brown hasn't shown any negative signs since placing last in the race. And yes, I think luck has a lot to do with it.

Come on. Even at 6:30 on Saturday, it was a 90 degree sauna at Belmont. Big Brown was running with a quartercrack. His training schedule was retarded because of the quartercrack, which, overall is good, but bad for training purposes. He broke from the starting gate badly and appeared to have brushed with Tale of Ekati soon after.

And how can any of us ever really know what it's like to run in the Kentucky Derby (1 1/4 miles), Preakness (1 3/16 miles) and Belmont (1 1/2 miles) during a span of 5 weeks?

To me, if you add up all those factors AND the fact that Big Brown was running on a dirt surface instead of polytrack, it was a damn miracle that so far, he appears to be in good condition.

Straight up, I'm not into scare tactics in order get my way, but just take 10 seconds and think of how gut wrenching it would've been if Big Brown fell and never got up.

When a horse dies on TV, I always wonder how many kids were watching. I can see them asking their parents what just happened, followed by an explanation and some tears.

And when kids see devastation like this, what they're usually seeking is an exact reason as to why and how this could happen. As adults and parents, it would seem to be our duty to provide this reasoning.

But, as with most loaded topics, it's not always possible to sum it all up in a phrase or two.

Instead of going on and on about how horse racing is about money and steroids, I think I'd just say that accidents will always happen, but there are many ways to make the sport safer and one of them is to mandate that all tracks install polytrack in place of dirt.