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May 15, 2008 9:00 pm US/Eastern
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Big Brown's Trainer Knows Hard Times
BALTIMORE (AP) ―
The man who would save horse racing had to save himself first.
Trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. spends $5,000 a month on mints for his horses. He's got first-class facilities, resources to burn, a growing list of clients and best of all, a thoroughbred named Big Brown.
But a decade ago, Dutrow was not only homeless, but nearly horseless as well. He slept on a cot in the tack room of a barn at Aqueduct, with two low-rent horses stuck in the stalls outside.
By his own measure, even that was a step up from where Dutrow had been for long stretches of the decade before that.
Small wonder, then, that he smiled broadly when someone asked what it would mean if Big Brown, the Kentucky Derby winner and odds-on favorite for the Preakness, were to go on to the Belmont and claim thoroughbred racing's first Triple Crown in 30 years.
"I would hope that it would do a lot for the game. I can tell you what it would do for my game," he said. "I'll move way up."
Even a Triple Crown will only do so much. Despite the relative health of its glamor events, the bottom has been falling out of the thoroughbred industry for years.
The Kentucky Derby drew a crowd of 157,000 two weeks ago and 120,000 are expected at Pimlico Race Course by the time the Preakness goes off Saturday. That same number, and perhaps even more, could turn up in New York three weeks from now if the colt's quixotic quest to sweep racing's crown jewels is still on the line.
But Thursday at Pimlico, with a full schedule on the card, you could count on one hand the number of fans watching from the rail as the first race went off. And that was hardly an anomaly.
Most tracks quit releasing attendance figures 15 years ago and after considerable hikes in wagering totals from the addition of both off-track and online betting the past 20 years, the handle has flattened out at $15 billion annually with limited prospects for growth.
The second part of Dutrow's reply will almost certainly come true. His business will go up by a little, but that will pale alongside what a Triple Crown could do for his reputation.
His stint in the spotlight since turning up at Churchill Downs with Big Brown has occasioned a "when-good-things-happen-to-bad-people" debate about Dutrow's rehabilitation.
Dutrow hasn't run from his past, but he's been more expansive about some episodes than others.
"I take care of my horses the right way. I stay on it all the time. I don't get there by cheating and drugging," he said.
You would have a hard time getting that statement past a few of the stewards. The thoroughbred industry equivalent of a police blotter -- a database maintained by the Association of Racing Commissioners International -- has Dutrow showing up 72 times in a half-dozen venues from New York to California. He's been fined or suspended for doping horses at least once every year from 2000 through 2007. And while he's hardly the only horseman with a rap sheet -- high-profile trainers Steve Asmussen, Todd Pletcher and Patrick Biancone all have been suspended for doping offenses the past few years -- Dutrow's is longer and darker than most.
In 1988, he was found in possession of a controlled substance and suspended for five years, the first of several marijuana charges that have blemished his career.
Barely two years after he returned to racing, Dutrow's former girlfriend and the mother of his daughter Molly, now 13, was murdered in a drug-related break-in. Not long after he hit bottom as a trainer in 1998, his father, Dick Dutrow, a respected trainer with 3,665 career wins, severed their relationship and then lost a battle with cancer in 1999.
"What I've done," Dutrow said, "I don't have any problems talking about."
Big Brown's principal owner, Michael Iavarone, knows the story chapter and verse. He also knows how another self-made New York millionaire named Sanford Goldfarb saw some of his own up-by-the-bootstraps saga in Dutrow, sent him a few good horses in 2000, and was handsomely rewarded for the effort.
It was right around then that Dutrow began spending most of his free time at the barn as well. He bought himself a TV and watched it a lot -- "'Seinfeld,' mostly," he recalled, "and other stuff that makes me laugh" -- understanding that the fewer distractions he indulged in the more successful he became.
"Sure his past concerned us," Iavarone said, standing outside Dutrow's barn, "but plenty of guys have their bouts. The first time I tried to call him, I got his voice mail and all it said was, 'Dutrow, yeah.' Not even leave a message.
"So I figured out pretty quickly he's not the most finely tuned businessman. But once you spend a few minutes around him, it's pretty obvious he's one of the best trainers in the country. The horses always come first with him. Always. Everything else is second," Iavarone said.
A long white fence running alongside Dutrow's barn on the backstretch has 11 small bronze plaques stretched across the top rail with the name of each Triple Crown winner.
On the other side of that fence and a few yards over, Big Brown was enjoying a bath in the warm morning sunshine. Dutrow looked in the colt's direction and tugged the bill of his baseball cap lower.
"I've always wanted more. That's probably why I always got in trouble. Now I'm here with a great horse and the chance to win a Triple Crown and you know what?" he said, then paused. "I still want more."
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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