"Horses Will Humble You"(see Edit)

says Mandella in "On The Muscle". The Belmont was the "biggest choke job in the history of sports" according to J.T. The Brick.

(Edited 6/23/08: this date we learn that
1. Big Brown supposedly was shoed the day of the Belmont. This puts into question the photos here of Big Brown's front feet that show long toes. Photos do lie, but, still those toes look long to me. Nevertheless--shoe the day of the race. In terms of energy expenditure for the horse going for the TC, how smart is that?
2. Recent photos show that BB sprung a rear shoe during the race. This would explain what I called the "pig like stride.". Explains everthing, really.)

I wanted to continue the Big Brown interview from last post, but ferreting out the reason for the performance is getting complicated, and so we'll take it from here without BB. My conclusions at the end of a series of posts divided due to photo manipulation problems. RR conclusions follow.

First, the subject of the BB feet, other than the quarter cracks. There were some problems. Here are BB feet freshly shod from a photo I saved before the Preakness. Notice decent balance, angles and toe lengths. This horse has naturally high heels, a cause of quarter cracks. Notice particularly the fairly short toes.
Here is BB being shod before the Preakness. You'll notice the front toes are significantly longer, and longer than the back toes. Correct shoeing in my opinion would make the back toes either as long as the front or a shade longer.
This is the photo that caught my eye after the Belmont. Notice the length of front left toe. Notice the distance from the point of the toe (the toe of the shoe) to the point of the frog! Farriers learn to eyeball the correct distance in inches from the point of the toe to the point of the frog. Here this distance quite obviously is way way too long. This horse looks like he needs a shoeing job in terms of the length of the toe unless the photo is an optical illusion.
The above photo was other than an optical illusion. They did not reshoe BB before the Belmont. Here is a wash rack photo of BB about 4 days pre-Belmont. This photo clearly shows front toes slightly too long for correct balance and front toes longer than rear toes, a no no.
The same front toes post Belmont. In the five day period they're even longer. The toe growth tends to accelerate as you go on in the shoeing cycle. This photo now shows rear toes that have yet to grow significantly and front toes both too long and out of balance with the rear. To put this horse's front feet back in balance you'd have to remove almost an inch of front toe.


Who am I to question Ian McKinley or whoever the farrier was. It's possible they declined to reshoe for a reason having to do with the quarter cracks. Guarantee that this toe length does BB little favor in the way of stride efficiency. BB's toes were also too long for the Derby. The last shoeing job to the Derby was three weeks out. That was a puzzler. But, the pre-Derby toe lengths were nothing like you see in the photo above.

What you get with the above is slow breakover (due to long toes) on the fronts, and faster breakover due to the shorter toes on the hinds. The "rate of breakover" for fronts/hinds should be either the same or slightly slower in the back for maximum propulsion. Never ever longer toes and slower breakover in the fronts. The horse wants to get the fronts through the stride and out of the way. Big Brown in this shoeing job was both uncomfortable and much less efficient.

More in the post below.