pet connection

I simply cannot tell you how much I want Big Brown to lose the Belmont Stakes, even though, of course, I will not be watching. As I’ve mentioned before, his owner and trainer are the worst sort of dirtbags, and I just hate to see people like this prosper.

Andrew Beyer, the best horse-racing writer in the universe, is retired from the Washington Post but comes back to write for them now and then. From him, this morning:

The series began with a filly, Eight Belles, dying on the track at Churchill Downs, and it is likely to end with the dismaying sight of owner Michael Iavarone and trainer Rick Dutrow celebrating in the winner’s circle at Belmont Park.

Horse racing has always attracted its share of rogues and charlatans, but few have been as brazen as Iavarone, co-chief executive of IEAH Stables. Iavarone presented himself as an investment banker who had made a fortune on Wall Street and was turning his business acumen to the horse racing game. The media lapped up his story, and even publications such as the New York Times and Business Week credulously reported that he had prospered on Wall Street.

Writer David Evans of Bloomberg.com exposed the lies: Iavarone had never been an investment banker. He was a stockbroker at firms peddling penny stocks; he was fined and suspended for securities offenses. When his career in the investment business fizzled, he turned to horse racing.

Iavarone’s sudden prominence in racing underscores the weakness of the sport’s regulatory system and should be a caution for any innocent who considers investing in horses. Iavarone couldn’t sell a share of a 10-cent gold-mining stock without being licensed by the securities industry and making his professional history a matter of public record. But he was soliciting investments for a $100 million horse racing “hedge fund” without disclosing his background — a fact that has sparked disbelief and derision from commentators outside the sport. John Helyar, co-author of “Barbarians at the Gate,” wrote for Bloomberg.com: ” ‘Big Brown’ has taken on a whole new meaning. It describes the . . . dung piles littering Iavarone’s past.”

OK, so that’s the owner, who’d put down his grandmother if he could turn a profit on it.  And the trainer? Beyers continues:

There are plenty of dung piles in Dutrow’s past, too, and since he has been in the public eye with Big Brown they’ve all been dug up again. The trainer’s record includes many drug-related infractions, most of them in cases where medications such as phenylbutazone and clenbuterol have registered over the legal limit in a horse’s system. In U.S. racing, this is considered business as usual; trainers regularly push the envelope and try to give their horses the maximum allowable dose of every drug that can help them.

Dutrow acknowledged that he administers the anabolic steroid Winstrol to Big Brown once a month, and before the Preakness he told reporters: “I don’t know what it does. I just like using it.” He was at least candid enough to talk about the use of steroids, which is one of the sport’s dirty little secrets. With no national regulatory organization, there is no uniformity in the banning of performance-enhancing substances. … Dutrow’s record lists many more serious infractions.

These people should be shunned, not celebrated. Sorry, Big Brown, and it’s nothing personal, but I hope you end up a healthy but embarassing last.

Not that I’ll be watching.

In other news: At Book Expo America I was honored to meet  Chaplain Ed Donnelly of the Race Track Chaplaincy of America. What a wonderful, sweet and caring man! He told me of talking to Larry and Cindy Jones, the trainers of the ill-fated Eight Belles. They prayed in her empty stall after the Derby, unable to stop the tears. Larry Jones, said the Rev. Donnelly, asked why God took her from them. The Rev. Donnelly said, “We must always remember they are all His fillies. They are never really ours at all.”

Eight Belles will be interred in the Kentucky Derby Museum. The Jones family will keep doing as they have done all their lives, loving, training and caring for horses in an ethical way. I’m not at all religious, but I know good people when I see them.  The Jones family vs. Big Brown’s handlers? No contest there.

And the connections of Big Brown? Here’s hoping they move into some other endeavor, and soon, as racing continues to feel pressure from inside and out to clean up its act.

Update: Wow, it just gets easier and easier to hope for no Cripple Crown winner this year. Big Brown jockey Kent Desormeaux just picked up a sponsorship. He’ll now be riding with a patch on his ass from … Hooters.

Stay classy, Kent. Whoops. Sorry, too late.

***

Yes, I know racehorses are not pets. Once the Cripple Crown is over, I’ll be done … until Breeders Cup, at least. Yes, I’m still the reluctant racing fan, and the horses (I’m not a gambler) are always on my mind.

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