Big Brown Ekes Out a Win

Big Brown's narrow victory in the Haskell will likely not answer many questions; did he show great determination in running down Coal Play (this time actually beating the 'other' Nick Zito horse in the field) just at the wire or did he look like a horse without much left? On paper, he should have waltzed away from this field easily; Kent Desormeaux seemed to be going to work on him for quite a while before getting a response, but it could be framed either way. While it's easy to knock the field (indeed, it's pretty easy to knock just about any 3-year-old male field this season), the one fact that does seem clear is that Big Brown has a long way to go before he would look even competitive against older horses if this is how hard he needs to work to beat a considerably less-than-stellar field of his agemates. (And let's not even discuss running him against older mares - Zenyatta would obviously mop the floor with him if he put in that sort of effort against her, as I believe many of her division would). Of course, that could be due to any number of factors (and no doubt some will point to the absence of Winstrol, although I would wager any number of physical or psychological issues could affect a growing horse in equal or greater measure -- perhaps he just does not like Desormeaux). He'd probably be closer to the likes of Commentator next year, but as it's something we'll never see (barring a George Washington-esque sub-fertility situation), it hardly seems worth dwelling on. There is a single question that needs to be answered before those above, however -- was this performance 'good enough' to keep him out of the breeding shed for a few more races?