Big Brown goes for history…hopefully falling short

On the eve of the Belmont Stakes, much ado is being made about Big Brown and his chances of completing the Triple Crown.  While this would be something incredible to witness, I can’t say I really want it to happen.

Horse Racing is one of the oldest sporting practices of this country and has usually been about which horse is the fastest on a given day.  That version of the sport is quite fun to watch because the unpredictability is riveting.  However, the sport now has become about which horse can perform, and live, while being treated with steroids and other harmful performance enhancing medications.

The horse with the most on the line tomorrow at Belmont is indeed one of the horses being given a performance enhancing substance.  While the substance in question, Stanozolol, is legal in the sport, it’s hard to believe it has a completely positive affect on Big Brown.  This drug, more comonly known as Winstrol, is meant to improve muscle growth and can be used to stiumulate apetite among weak animals.  Something tells me that after his wins at the Kentucky Derby and The Preakness Big Brown must be feeling great fatigue in his body.  So, how can it be seen as legal to induce apetite changes and enhance muscle growth on an animal that might not even be healthy enough to race again so soon?  How can a sport in which athletic ability is the most important aspect of its players allow anabolic steroids to be legal? 

Aside from the fact that it may be putting undue hardship on an animal and the obvious ethical concerns, performance enhancing drugs in horse racing makes the sport so much more predictable and wrogly entertaining.  I enjoy watching the major horse races because the long-shot usually has a fair chance of winning…assuming he, and the other horses, are not doped up.  However, this time around, the favorite, and Triple Crown hopeful, is pubicly known to be on steroids.  And the worst part, if he wins tomorrow, most people will be so caught up in the moment that they won’t realize the Triple Crown was achieved unethically.  I compare it to when Barry Bonds broke the homerun record; most people thought it was a great thing to see but would have put an asterisk in the record book next to the number.  The difference though, is Big Brown is known to be on steroids and Bonds is only thought to be.  This is all the more reason I need to say performance enhancing drugs should be outlawed in horse racing, like all other major sports, especially since the competitor himself, the horse, has no say in whether or not they’re used.  It annoys me to know that trainers and owners of these horses will drug them in order to earn some money and chase a sacred feat, like the Triple Crown.  If Big Brown wins tomorrow, I move to have an asterisk placed next to the entry in the record books…which is tough to say because Big Brown could have been a special enough horse to win a Triple Crown without having steroids forced upon him.  I guess we’ll never know.