ELMONT, N.Y. -- Trainer Rick Dutrow leaned on the rail at the Detention Barn a half-hour after Big Brown had been pulled up in the Belmont Stakes and momentarily dropped his forehead onto his crossed arms.
Dutrow's thin brown hair was soaked. His blue shirt soggy. His hopes for history lost. Banished with the loss of a Triple Crown.
Da' Tara, trained by Nick Zito and a 38-1 shot, went straight to the lead out of the starting gate yesterday and wired the field, winning in 2 minutes, 29.65 seconds and paying $79. Behind him, coming out of the turn for home, jockey Kent Desormeaux shocked a surprisingly small announced crowd of 94,476 at Belmont Park by pulling up Big Brown and easing home far behind the rest of the field.
For Zito, who said he has made his living pulling upsets and playing the game no matter what the odds, it was the second time in five years one of his horses has stopped a Triple Crown bid. Birdstone beat the undefeated Smarty Jones in 2004.
"I got no idea what happened," Dutrow said an hour after the race. "I was looking for a problem, and so far I can't see a problem."
Dutrow said because he can see nothing wrong with Big Brown, he will scope him as a precautionary measure.
"I don't know what else to do to see if anything else is wrong," Dutrow said. "The horse kind of looks like he's fine to me."
Big Brown, 5-0 before yesterday, was attempting to become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978. And his trainer had said on a daily basis that he could not imagine his horse losing.
"It's a foregone conclusion," he said several times, adding, "We're running against not very good horses, and he's a very good horse."
Those comments were on the mind of trainer David Carroll yesterday after Denis of Cork came home second, 5 1/4 lengths behind Da' Tara.
"I'm not one little bit [sorry]," Carroll said when asked whether he felt bad for the crowd that had come to the track hoping to see a Triple Crown winner. "There is a right way of doing things and a wrong way. You win with class. You lose with class. I feel bad for the horse, but [Dutrow] basically called my horse a [expletive deleted] and I didn't like that."
Zito was kinder, saying that when Big Brown is on his game, "he is a special horse. The champ, Big Brown, didn't run his race today. He wasn't himself, and Da' Tara was."
