Owners plan on Big Brown in Breeders’ Cup
NEW YORK -- If there was any doubt that the owners and the trainer of Big Brown plan to run their horse in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita on Oct. 25, that doubt was erased Tuesday.
It all but came straight from the horse’s mouth.
Michael Iavarone and Richard Schiavo, the managing partners of International Equine Acquisitions Holdings, which owns Big Brown, and trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. all said they plan to run Big Brown in the Breeders’ Cup.
On Saturday at the Belmont Stakes, Big Brown will try to become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978, but his handlers also expect their horse to run later in the summer and fall.
“Why do you people [in the media] not believe me?” Dutrow said. “I’ve said all along that the plan is for Big Brown to run in the Breeders’ Cup.”
If Big Brown does run in the Breeders’ Cup, he would face Curlin, the 2007 horse of the year who won the race in October, for the first time.
“The only thing that will keep Big Brown from running in the Breeders’ Cup Classic is Big Brown,” Iavarone said. “If he is healthy, he will run.”
Schiavo nodded in agreement.
Dutrow, as he has noted before, said the plan after Saturday’s Belmont is for Big Brown to run in the Travers Stakes on Aug. 23 at Saratoga in upstate New York, then the Breeders’ Cup before retiring to stud.
On the day of the Preakness, a reported $50-million deal with Three Chimneys, a Kentucky horse farm, was finalized.
As for Big Brown’s cracked left front hoof, that continues to improve. “He’s in better shape now than he has ever been,” Dutrow said Tuesday.
Dutrow will wait until Friday to have a patch applied. Hoof specialist Ian McKinlay had suggested putting on the patch on Saturday, the morning of the Belmont. Dutrow, however, doesn’t want to deal with it on what could be a historic day.
Big Brown, in his first workout since the cracked hoof was discovered, ran five furlongs -- five-eighths of a mile -- in one minute flat Tuesday. “He jumped over a big hurdle today,” Dutrow said.
McKinlay had planned to apply the acrylic and fiberglass patch Monday but decided to wait a few days so the crack could heal naturally.
Before applying the patch, McKinlay will remove the sutures, clean the area, redrill holes and put in new sutures. If necessary, he will insert a drain. Then he will cover it all with an acrylic adhesive that sets in five minutes.
“The adhesive that we’ll rebuild that wall with is stronger than the hoof itself,” McKinlay told the Associated Press.
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