The UNmystery of Big Brown

I don’t usually watch horse racing. I like horses too much. But this year, coincidentally, I found myself at friend’s houses for both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. I still didn’t watch—I merely sat in the room while everybody else did, quietly averting my eyes. But I was there. I was in the room when Big Brown nosed out Eight Belles, and when Eight Belles, moments later, came tumbling down. I was also in the room when Big Brown so decidedly left everyone in the dust at the Preakness, giving hope to the wobbly-kneed industry—the promise of the first Triple Crown since 1978’s Affirmed was again within sight. However, I was nowhere near a television when Big Brown pulled his greatest feat yet: his now historic finish dead last. Everyone—his veterinarians included—seemed stumped. Aside from the cracked hoof he was forced to run on, if no physical ailment existed then how to explain this … mystery? That’s the word I saw over and over again: mystery. Michael Iavarone, the Co-President of International Equine Acquisitions Holdings said, “All we can do is chalk this one up as a mystery and regroup.”

I am no animal expert. I am certainly no racehorse expert (I admittedly wish the sport would just go away), but I have to wonder: if there truly was no detectable physical reason for Big Brown’s pulling back—and surely I hope there wasn’t—did that make it a mystery? Or, more to the point, did that make it the kind of mystery we don’t already anticipate in and expect from animals? Isn’t it, in fact, pretty animal-y to behave unpredictably? Think of Roy Horn’s (of Siegfried & Roy) seven-year-old white tiger suddenly lunging at his neck during a performance and dragging him off the stage “like a ragdoll,” as one audience member described it. Or when, just a few months ago, a grizzly bear named Rocky, known as the “best working bear in the business,” similarly lunged at his trainer, Stephan Miller, fatally biting him on his neck. While surely unexpected, it doesn’t seem so mysterious that if you ask an animal—or human, for that matter—to make his best scary face for the one thousandth time in a row, he might tell you no in the best way he knows how, which in the case of tigers and grizzly bears, can be much scarier than the scary face he was asked to make in the first place. Trainers like Stephan Miller know the risks involved. Miller’s cousin, Randy Miller, who is also in the animal-training business, said, “If one of these animals gets a hold of your throat, you’re finished.”

No matter how tame or trained or domesticated animals are, they’re still animals. So are we. In commenting on the attack on Roy Horn, Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) recognized that. “Every living thing goes crazy. Every species. And there’s nothing—no fingers to point.” Yet still, the headlines kept repeating: Mystery Surrounds Big Brown’s Triple Crown Loss. Big Brown’s Story Is a Mystery. Big Brown’s Mystery Adds to Belmont Misery. Why didn’t anyone suggest the possibility that this was Big Brown saying no in the best way he knows how? We don’t know all that goes on inside the minds of animals, just as we don’t inside the minds of each other. The day we do, we will all stop being animals. So who is to say that upon making his turn into that last roiling stretch—a sight that on most days sets his legs afire—Big Brown didn’t catch the scent of a Nathan’s Famous hot dog instead? Not a mouth-watering, desirous scent, but enough of a whiff to give him pause: What’s that? And that this didn’t cause him to slow one small fraction of a hair, but enough for him to take note: Oooo, this slowing feels good. And that in the end, Big Brown didn’t decide that stopping would feel even better. Why has no one wondered if Big Brown simply had a change of heart?

Anyone with a house pet—even the most well-trained kind—can tell you, every now and then, despite knowing exactly what is being asked of him and exactly which yummy treat he will receive in compensation, he simply won’t do it. He’ll run away for a moment, flutter his legs in the air, toss his fluffy head in revelry or defiance or lust, before returning to perform the task properly. As much as this frustrates me in my own dog, Safari, who is still (a little too slowly) learning how to “come,” I can’t help delighting in his moments of disobedience. Because they don’t actually look like disobedience to me—they look like, to steal an image from Leonard Cohen, little cracks where the animal gets through.

It would be hopeful if the horse-racing industry could begin to see their thundering machines for what they really are: animals. Animals are a mystery. Big Brown is a horse. I wish more racehorses were.