Big Brown appears for gathering
ELMONT, N.Y. – A warm Sunday morning with Big Brown: What more could a racing fan ask for?
The Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner made a cameo appearance Sunday for the “Breakfast at Belmont” crowd, who cheered as exercise rider Michelle Nevin galloped him past the grandstand on a muddy track. Although the calm, friendly colt likes being petted, he didn’t stop for a photo op, coffee and doughnuts.
“He was very cheeky,” Nevin said. “He had a basic gallop again, and he felt good. He knows something is going on because all these people are around him all the time.”
Nevin confirmed that hoof lameness specialist Ian McKinlay will place an acrylic and fiberglass patch on the small quarter crack in Big Brown’s left front foot today. Plans remain on for a breezing workout Tuesday.
Among Big Brown’s fans is 77-year-old baseball icon Don Zimmer, a longtime friend of Rick Dutrow’s family. Zimmer, a senior adviser for the Tampa Bay Rays, hung out with Dutrow during Derby week, and the trainer calls him “one of my people.”
“He’s a fun guy. I root for him,” Zimmer told Newsday’s New York Yankees writer, Kat O’Brien, in St. Petersburg, Fla., a few days before the Preakness. “I knew his daddy when I was growing up in Cincinnati. My daddy used to take me to River Downs, and he was there training.”
Zimmer, a longtime horseplayer, encouraged Joe Torre to own thoroughbreds, and Dutrow was his trainer when he managed the Yankees. Zimmer and Torre frequently visited Dutrow at Belmont, Aqueduct and Saratoga, and they entertained him at Yankee Stadium. Before Dutrow left school at 16 to work for his father, he said he was “a catcher who could hit,” which also describes Torre at that age.
Zimmer said he attended the 2006 Kentucky Derby and was not crazy about the experience. “When I came back, I told all my friends I would never go back. Too many people, too crowded. I would rather just stay at home and watch it. A friend from California called and invited me this year. He’s one of my best friends, so I decided to go. Plus I knew Dutrow had a horse running.”
Casino Drive won a leisurely, three-way workout with stablemates Spark Candle and Champagne Squall on Sunday. “We got him in 1:10 and 3,” joked Nobutaka Tada, spokesman for owner Hidetoshi Yamamoto and trainer Kazuo Fujisawa. “No, I am sure it was much slower and probably not what Americans are used to. But we are very happy with the way Casino Drive is coming along.”