By ED FOUNTAINE
June 3, 2008
Few horses have dominated the first two jewels of the Triple Crown like Big Brown, prompting trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. to say it's a "foregone conclusion" the "Brown Bomber" will complete the sweep by winning Saturday's 140th Belmont Stakes.
"These horses just cannot run with him," said Dutrow, who plans to breeze Brown five furlongs this morning at Belmont Park. "Maybe it's just not a real strong year for 3-year-olds."
Right on, Rick, says Len Friedman of the Ragozin Sheets, which calculate speed ratings based on such factors as time, weight carried, ground lost and track variant (the lower the Sheets number, the faster the race). According to Friedman, Big Brown is a superior horse who's beating inferior foes - but if he'd faced better horses in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, chances are Brown would have lost at least one of those races.
Big Brown ran a "minus 3/4" on the Sheets, the fastest Derby ever, including Secretariat's "1 minus" and the "0 plus" earned by Smarty Jones and Barbaro.
"His Derby was a top-class effort," Friedman told The Post yesterday. "[But] he's been very fortunate in the quality of his opposition. This 3-year-old crop is weak overall, well below average based on the last 5-10 years. If you took Big Brown out, this year is the worst.
"He could afford to be four or five wide around the track [in the Derby] because he was that much better than what he was running against. If Big Brown had the same trip against Smarty Jones or Barbaro, he would have lost."
Sheets devotees believe a horse that just ran a top number will "bounce" (regress) in its next race, unless given time to recover between starts - which is why Dutrow was so concerned about the two-week turnaround between the Derby and Preakness. Indeed, Big Brown did bounce in Baltimore.
"He reacted [from the Derby] to run a 33/4 in the Preakness," Friedman said. "That would not have won in very many years. He ran against an extremely soft field."
Big Brown is often compared with Smarty Jones, who also was undefeated when he bid for the Triple Crown in 2004, only to lose the Belmont by a length to Birdstone.
"Smarty Jones put together a series of great races," said Friedman. "Big Brown has that one big effort, but Smarty Jones, at this point, had a stronger, more consistent campaign."
Smarty's previous races "absolutely" set him up for a bounce in the Belmont, Friedman said, "but he ran pretty well. He got beat because [Birdstone] jumped up and ran big, not because he ran bad."
What do the Sheets say about Big Brown's chances Saturday?
"I'd say he's about 50-50 to win, which means he'll be one of the big underlays of all time," Friedman said. "Smarty Jones, I felt, was about even-money also. But it's not bad to be going for the Triple Crown with a 50-percent chance. Most of the others, I thought, were anywhere from 5-1 to 20-1 underdogs. It's very hard to run three big races in five weeks."
Casino Drive, the Japanese invader, ran a 23/4 winning the Peter Pan, the best Sheets number of the other Belmont runners, "but how can anybody read that horse?" Friedman said. "Maybe his last race was the end of the line, maybe he's a superhorse who'll run the big number in the Belmont.
"The rest," Friedman said, "are much slower than Big Brown. They'd have to jump up just to get in the ballpark."
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Three Belmont contenders turned in half-mile workouts yesterday: Anak Nakal went in :49.67 over Saratoga's Oklahoma training track, Icabad Crane breezed in :48.60 at the Fair Hill training center in Maryland, and Denis of Cork also went in :48.60 at Churchill Downs.
