commendable made a comeback?

Things set up perfectly for Da Tara's wire-to-wire job yesterday in the Belmont. The inside had been playing well all day, Tale of Etaki looked bad in the post parade (all washed out from the heat) and couldn't muster up any real pressure, and Big Brown had but fumes in the tank after the two bang-up efforts. I wish I could report that I made some money, but no such luck. My favorite part of yesterday was catching footage last night of the IEAH guys giving hugs and kisses to Big Brown while peeking over every so often to see if the cameras were catching it all. Their PR people might want to have them take lessons from Brittany Spears, or somebody along those lines, on how to properly work it for the media. Too funny.

Poor Big Brown was just a tired horse coming off of the first two legs of the Triple Crown. The distance, track and timing of the race all worked against him. He hated the dirt (real dirt for the first time) on the first turn and was pretty miserable from that point on, even after getting out. Doubt that the lack of steroids meant much (they had served their purpose) and the biggest impact of the quarter crack was the lost training time. Fact that Da Tara pulled off the theft up front only confirms what the first two legs of the series had suggested: this is a mediocre crop of 3yos, at best. He ran slower and slooower each quarter and his Beyer Speed figure of 99 has to be one of the lower winning figures in some time. I'll have to dig up what Commendable ran when he pulled off a similar feat. (Can't find it readily, but I'd bet it was in the low 100s.) I hear that they had water issues at Belmont, but haven't seen reported that they didn't water the track as usual.

Horrible job by ABC covering the race, btw. It was all Big Brown before and after the race, with some ridiculous questioning immediately after the colt was pulled up. I don't like what Desormeaux did at all, especially given the fact that he said that he didn't feel anything wrong; he just knew he wasn't going to get 5th money so there was no sense in carrying on. Now, I've had my fair share of horses run that weren't in line to finish eighth, let alone fifth, but the routine is fairly simple for the jock: throw a few half-hearted crosses and maybe a love tap or two of the whip before galloping to the wire. None of this BS with pulling the horse up. I mean, that was just grandstanding. I don't know if that was on orders from Dutrow and IEAH to cover the mysterious ailment that will undoubtedly surface in the coming weeks, or what, but it caused a level of hysteria that was unwarranted and plain silly. Plus, it took away from Zito doing his shtick for the cameras, which I find fairly annoying most of the time, but would have infinitely preferred to the Big Brown nonsense, or, worse yet, those folks in the winner's circle.

Fact that connections have been so quick to target the Jim Dandy with Big Brown only plays into the notion that the colt is done. He gets beat badly and you're so puzzled as to why it happened and you've already got him spotted in, like, 45 days? Whaat? Maybe Kent will pull him up after a quarter mile in that one and he'll go straight to Three Chimneys right off the track. Bet those guys are thrilled with that $50m valuation these days. Young Clay, who put the deal together, will be a busy man talking up Big Brown at $100,000+ a pop next year. Sad thing, though, is that he'll get his 100+ mares and we'll have dubiously constructed offspring to watch race five times a year in no time. That is, the ones that make it to the races, of course.