Word: browne
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...with leaders until the far turn. Then, with little prodding from Desormeaux, he glided past everyone down the stretch. "It's very unusual to have a horse who can do that," says Hall of Fame trainer Carl Nafzger. "He doesn't really hit overdrive; he just moves away." Big Brown's knack for controlling a race has Nafzger comparing the laid-back colt to Seattle Slew, the legendary horse who won the Triple Crown in 1977. No one saw this coming; Big Brown sold for just $190,000 as a 2-year-old, and before the Derby...
...oddball cast of humans supporting Big Brown makes the horse's rise more Guys and Dolls than Kentucky blue blood. They're fast-talking New Yorkers. Besides Dutrow, an ex-addict who was once so down and out that he lived in a racetrack barn, take Michael Iavarone, 37, Big Brown's majority owner. An ex--Wall Street banker and Long Island native who left the rat race for horse-racing, Iavarone and his partners arranged to buy control of Big Brown for $2.5 million in September, after watching him race once--once--on TV. "We put our balls...
Iavarone bought his piece of the horse from Paul Pompa, a New Jersey guy who runs a Brooklyn trucking company. Pompa was offered some $1.5 million extra for Big Brown from the stable run by Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, who doubles as the most powerful man in horse-racing. No one says no to the Sheik. But Pompa did, because he wanted to keep a 25% share in Big Brown. Before the Preakness, venerable Kentucky stud farm Three Chimneys bought Big Brown's breeding rights for upwards of $50 million, putting at least...
...team entrusted Big Brown to jockey Desormeaux, a Hall of Famer who moved his family from California to New York a couple of years ago because he got fed up with losing out West. Though he had already won two Derbys, the last in 2000, Desormeaux was supposed to be history. Now he's primed for the Triple Crown and inspiring fans in the process. Desormeaux, 38, balances racing with raising son Jacob, 9, who suffers from Usher syndrome, a disease that causes deafness and a gradual loss of vision. Jacob has lived through 11 surgeries. "He's the happiest...
Dutrow, whose father was a respected trainer, cleaned up his life to get back in the races. He's handled Big Brown with care and become a doting father to his 13-year-old daughter. But his detox has still left him a few furlongs short of redemption. His racing rap sheet is as long as Big Brown's stride. He's been suspended several times over the past few years for everything from overmedicating his horses to giving them banned substances and even for falsifying a workout report. Hey, nobody's perfect...