2008 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes Winner

Major races: Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, Haskell Invitational

Awards: 2008 Eclipse Award for Champion Three-Year-Old Male

Post Career: Retired from racing in 2009. Stood at stud at Three Chimneys Farm in Midway, Kentucky. He has sired numerous stakes winners and has become a successful breeding stallion. Some of his notable offspring include Big Blue Kitten, Brown Almighty, and Shimmering Aspen.

April 10 - Big Brown

He was named by Paul Pompa who was in the shipping business. Yep, named for UPS's nickname, Brown.

Big Brown needed to win the Florida Derby to qualify for the Kentucky Derby. He was training up at Palm Meadows about 40 minutes north of Gulfstream Park. I was the artist in residence at Gulfstream that year and every day, the talk around the track was about how Big Brown was training. The last couple of weeks before the Florida Derby, caravans of car would form to make the drive up just to watch him breeze. He won the Florida Derby and was on the Kentucky Derby.

There was an event the night before the KY Derby hosted by the Permanently Disabled Jockey Fund. It was crazy as I painted Big Brown in the #20 saddle cloth that he would be wearing the next day. The painting brought $10,000 of him winning the Kentucky Derby and the race hadn't even run yet!

Between the hype at his Florida base and then the incredible confidence in him before the derby, I can't say I've seen anything like it, before or since.

Big Brown was one of the most talked about horses of the 2000s. He was a big, powerful chestnut colt born in Kentucky in April of 2005. His owners were Iron Horse Stable and IEAH Stables, and his trainer was Rick Dutrow Jr. His father was a stakes horse named Boundary, who was a son of the great sire Danzig. His mother was a mare named Mien, by the famous European stallion Nureyev. Through both sides, his pedigree traced back to the legendary Northern Dancer. Big Brown only ran one race as a two year old, but he won it by eleven lengths and immediately got people talking.

His three year old season was the stuff of legend, at least for a while. He won an allowance race in March of 2008, then crushed his rivals in the Florida Derby in his first try in stakes company. That made him the favorite for the 2008 Kentucky Derby, even though he had only run three races in his life. From the far outside post, he ran past the field and won the Derby by four and three quarter lengths over the filly Eight Belles. That made him the first horse in nearly eighty years to win the Derby from gate 20. Two weeks later, he won the Preakness Stakes by another five and a quarter lengths over Macho Again, looking every bit like a horse who could sweep the Triple Crown.

Then came one of the strangest moments in racing history. In the Belmont Stakes, Big Brown was the heavy favorite. He had the chance to become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978. But on a hot June day, jockey Kent Desormeaux pulled him up in the stretch, and the colt finished dead last. The race was won by a 38 to 1 long shot named Da' Tara. No clear injury was ever found, and people argued for years about what really happened. Big Brown ran twice more, winning the Haskell Invitational and the Monmouth Stakes, before being retired with seven wins from eight starts and earnings of more than 3.6 million dollars. He was named the 2008 Eclipse Award winner as Champion Three Year Old Male.

Big Brown went to stud at Three Chimneys Farm in Kentucky and later moved to other farms before being pensioned to Old Friends, the famous retirement farm in Georgetown, Kentucky. His career as a stallion did not match his career as a runner, but his racing story remains one of the most dramatic of the modern era. Big Brown was thrilling, controversial, and impossible to ignore. He gave the sport two of its most exciting Saturdays in 2008 and one of its most puzzling Saturdays as well.

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