By: Elizabeth Rancani

If Big Brown wins today, he will be the super freak that his connections claim he is. He will have earned every inch of his Derby roses, and just may finally end the Triple Crown drought. He is perhaps the only horse in the field capable of doing that.

Big BrownBut, is he really worth all the hype? In recent years, even with horses running fewer and fewer starts, Derby favorites came to the Derby with far more in the way of credentials. Big Brown has one graded stakes win, over suspect company. Watching the Florida Derby, it is pretty clear none of this year’s three year olds would have defeated him that day, but still it is one race. The other two races he won and won big were not in graded company.

Last year Street Sense won the Tampa Bay Derby, finished second in the Blue Grass and was a two year old champ that obviously loved Churchill Downs. The year before that Barbaro won the Florida Derby, in similar Big Brown fashion but had raced four other times on turf and dirt and won them all convincingly. Then there were Smarty Jones, and Afleet Alex, both with six starts to their credit before the Derby.

In the past Derby favorites included Hopeful winners, champion two year olds, Champagne and Breeders Cup winners. They included horses that ran tough in the Spring and ran more than two times. They resembled Colonel John on paper more than Big Brown, but with Santa Anita now being run on synthetics no one knows what to make of it.

Bellamy Road was hailed as the second coming of Secretariat a few years back after romping in the Wood Memorial in what has to be the most impressive Derby prep in history, but on Derby day he was caught in a speedy front end pace and was finished before they hit the quarter pole. Derbies are not often won by the most brilliant horse. They are won by the tough, experienced, hard fighting animals that can handle adversity and have been prepped for this moment. Triple Crowns, even more so are won by animals that were champions at two as well as three. Many other late bloomers have come to the Belmont seeking the ultimate prize; horses like Funny Cide, Pleasant Colony, Sunday Silence, Charismatic, Silver Charm, Real Quiet and Alysheba, but they were not deemed worthy to join the club.

So if Brown wins today and wins big, there will be talk of a Triple Crown, the first in thirty years. Will he be enough to end the longest drought in history? Maybe, he is just that good. He will have to be to win it, because he will be the Crown winner with the least credentials. At this point Seattle Slew, Affirmed, Citation, Count Fleet, and Secretariat were all Eclipse award winners, and Secretariat was Horse of the Year. It will be nice to finally see a horse win the elusive Crown, but also kind of sad to see a horse like Brown join with the likes of the aforementioned. It will be concrete evidence, as if we needed more, that the game will never be the same.