Questions about Big Brown's loose shoe?

Question

Do you think the photograph was genuine, not altered by Photoshop or similar?

Wouldn't a trainer or farrier check the shoes prior to an important race? Can such a thing happen spontaneously?

Answer 1

I'm sure the AP photo is genuine and unaltered and you can bet the ranch that Big Brown did not go on the track with a shoe pulled loose like that. I think kmnmiamisax is right. It happened during the race. But to me it doesn't look pulled loose so bad that Big Brown would have felt it on that surface. If so, Desormeaux would certainly have felt it if Big Brown could feel it and he would have said so after the race. But he didn't and so I don't believe the shoe was a significant factor causing him to lose the race. Soon after the race Desormeaux was quoted as saying, "I have no idea. But long before we went into the last turn, I knew I had no horse." So I think the most sufficient factor for Big Brown, like so many before Big Brown who had won the first two legs of the Triple Crown and then lost the third, some greater even than Big Brown, is that he just didn't have the constitution for that third tough race in five weeks, the toughest of the three.

Answer 2

I think the picture was an actual picture of a horse's hoof and the shoe... I don't think anyone messed around with it.  

However, I don't think that's the way it looked after the race... everyone said the horse was fine and they couldn't find anything wrong with him.  Even an idiot trainer like Dutrow can look down at the horse's hoof and see that the shoe is falling off.  Everyone said the shoe and hoof were fine after the race.  

Shoes can fall off rather spontaneously... maybe the horse stepped in some sticky mud or maybe he stepped on the shoe and then twisted his foot around making the nails bend and come out, or maybe the horse got his hoof stepped on by another horse and that pulled the shoe off.  There's a lot of things that can happen.  So the horse could have gone into the race with his feet perfectly fine, but with so much going on around him (there was a lot of traffic since he was breaking from the 1 post), the shoe could have come off during the race.

I believe the shoe came loose during the race, but since he walked on it after the race it got stuck back to his hoof, thereby masking it from the trainer and owner.

I read a quote by the owner Iavarone and he said it looks like there was a nail and the horse could have been running on a hot nail (meaning that the farrier could have put it in too far into the hoof where the horse can feel it instead of outside in the hoof wall where the horse couldn't feel it).  That's quite odd however since there was all the talk that the horse was wearing those special shoes that cost hundreds of dollars and get glued on!  Why would they switch to nails for that race after they know the glue ones worked better for him?

I was concerned with the fact that they were waiting to patch the hoof until the day before the race.  And they weren't going to work him out with the patch... they were patching it and then racing him.  That seemed really dumb to me.  I think that when they patched it, they changed his shoes too... I seem to remember pictures the day before the belmont of Big Brown getting his shoes put on.  That's pretty stupid... if anything was wrong with those shoes, there's no way that they'd know until after the race.  It would have been much smarter to shoe him and then work him out so that if there was a shoe problem, they could fix it before the race.

Can it happen?  Of course... horses throw shoes all the time.

edit: recent reports say that Guadalcanal stepped on Big Brown's foot at the start of the race and that's how the shoe came loose.  Apparently the horse was wearing nail shoes which I still find retarded since they know the horse has weak hooves that have difficulty holding in nails.  The glue-ons would have come loose just the same, but they wouldn't have a nail sticking out of it into his hoof... and the glue on might have come off entirely leaving a bare hoof which would have been easier to run on than the flopping nail shoe.

Answer 3

I thought he had the special glued on shoes, too, so how is a nail even an issue now???  Makes you wonder more and more about these connections of his....I can't help but wonder how he'd be doing if he were in different hands all around.

Plus, it doesn't make sense to me that something could be a problem at the outset of the race, and then be fine at the conclusion of it, and still be a possible reason for the horse's running poorly.  Because if it somehow reaffixed itself during the course of running, it would have to have happened early on, otherwise the running stress everywhich way and the dirt in/on it would make that (reaffixing itself) impossible later on.  So, therefore, it would not have been an issue for the duration of the race, only maybe in the very beginning.

If the shoe somehow reaffixed itself so as to be painful, or uncomfortable, or in some way a hindrance, wouldn't that condition continue to exist at the conclusion of the race???

Not only that.....if the connections got this photo, and chose to release it to the press (they could have kept it quiet - and perhaps they should have), as if to say, "Here's a possible reason why Big Brown ran poorly,"  a lot of people are going to be asking, "Didn't you check his shoes before the race?" - to which Dutrow would probably reply, "I don't know. Why're you asking ME that - that's for the farrier to do" and Iavarone might throw in about the nail, "Well, a hot nail from another horse's shoe, of course, not Big Brown's, since he's on glue."

Answer 4

I agree with Putts. .

Why now are we hearing about the loose shoe.

Didn't they check him out afterwards?  

And most importanly if there was a bent s***w, why didn't

they see it after the race.  To me, this is just a Dutrow excuse.

Answer 5

The video shows that his hoof was stepped on by another horse as they were leaving the gate, so it is most likely that the shoe was loosened at that time.  It seem plausible to me, something was clearly bothering the animal during the race.

Answer 6

Big Brown's glued on shoes were on his front hooves only.  His back hooves always had nailed on shoes.  The glued on shoes were on the front because of his previous quarter crack problems.  He didn't have problems in the back so they used regular shoes.    

It's very common for a shoe to come loose during a race.  They think Big Brown's came loose because Guadalcanal stepped on his back foot near the break.  There's a picture of  his foot getting stepped on at http://news.bloodhorse.com/article/45856...

Although the loose shoe is a reasonable excuse for a less than stellar performance, I don't think it entirely explains why he did so poorly in the Belmont.  Horses have finished much better with worse problems than a loose shoe.    

This story kind of reminds me of the Spectacular Bid safety pin excuse.  Bid's trainer was a buffoon who bragged about his horse, just like Dutrow bragged about Big Brown.  So when Bid lost the Belmont, his trainer claimed that he only lost  because he had a safety pin in his hoof .  But he didn't come up with the safety pin story for some time after the Belmont.  So for years everyone joked that the horse "allegedly" lost the race because of a safety pin.  

But now 29 years later the Spectacular Bid safety pin excuse has become gospel.  Wikipedia presents the story as fact although back when it actually happened people seriously doubted the story and for good reason.  

So when Big Brown had such a terrible Belmont, my wife bet me that it would take them at least a week to come up with "their version of the safety pin excuse".  So I'm taking the newest Big Brown excuse with a grain of salt.  

In any case, I suspect that just like the Spectacular Bid safety pin story, Big Brown's loose shoe story will go down in history as the "real reason" he lost the Belmont.