Nobody's Mentioning the Steroids

So Big Brown didn't win the Belmont, and 30 years go by without a Triple Crown winner. I'm not surprised. When I heard the offhand comment, I knew he wouldn't win.

Trainer Rick Dutrow decided to change Big Brown's regimen. Brown had been getting monthly steroid injections. Of course, the racing society questioned it, and wondered if it affected his ability to win the first two races (Derby and Preakness).

So Mr. Dutrow decided that Brown would race clean and declined to give him his May 15th injection.

Y'know, when you have the biggest race in horse racing history on the line, you would generally not want to mess with a successful regimen. Would you?

Because he ran so badly, everyone's all in a lather about what might be wrong with him. They have vets looking down his throat into his windpipe searching for internal bleeding and so on. They're questioning whether the quarter crack in his hoof had anything to do with it. (My gelding gets those all the time. It's when their hooves are too long and they aren't wearing down properly or they are trimmed wrong. It doesn't stop him at all.)

But nobody is mentioning the steroids.

Could it possibly be as simple as that?

What is it they say? When you hear hooves, you think "horse", not zebra? (As in, look for the obvious)...

*sigh*

Labels: whines and rants

posted by Jeanne @ 6:45 PM