I enjoy watching the Triple Crown races each year, and have been a fan, at least through association, since I was a kid. Weekdays my dad would come home from work, paper folded under his arm, and when I leafed through I would notice that the horse/betting section was always torn out. On weekends I was occasionally dragged to the track, but mostly I saw the insides of local OTB’s. (I suspect my dad still makes occasional visits for nostalgia, if nothing else.)

So I follow the big horses and races when they are in season, and I am familiar with names like Secretariat and Seattle Slew because of my dad. And having watched a handful of near-Triple Crown winners in the last five years, I was particularly excited by the prospect of Big Brown being the first in my adult lifetime.

We now know that that didn’t happen (though we’re not sure exactly why), and even as I watched the race I felt like I was viewing an alternate ending to a DVD: because the ending we took for granted was Big Brown kicking in the rocket boosters at the final turn and blowing everyone away as he had done twice in the past three months. But the alternate, and very real, ending was Big Brown being pulled up by his jockey to come in dismally and unequivocally last.

In the world of sports, things happen. Great boxers get knocked out. Great gymnasts fall. Great teams collapse. The gods smile on the underdog as luck comes into play. I admit, I love an upset victory as much as the next guy, but I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that a great event in sports history had failed to come to fruition before my eyes.

The hunt for reasons began. Was Big Brown hurt? Were there track problems? Was it the lack of training due to the cracked hoof? How about the mid-90s temperature on race day? Or had he run too hard, too often, in too short a period of time?

In short: how did Big Brown, the unbeatable super-horse, become so suddenly beatable?

We’ll never know, because super-horse or not, Big Brown still can’t talk.

Then I saw this article and everything started to make more sense. Maybe the interrupted training and the weather and the horse’s feel for the track all had something to do with it. But a super-horse like Big Brown, one might say, could have handled all that. He did, after all, whip the field in both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness by several lengths.

But maybe — just maybe — it was the fact that Big Brown had been receiving shots of the steroid Winstrol on the 15th of each month leading up to his almost historic run; and had not received any Winstrol shots since before the Kentucky Derby.

There it is: “steroids,” a word that has become as familiar to American society, and sports fans in particular, as “Super Bowl” or “World Series” or “BALCO.”

We know all the big names, especially in baseball: Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco (big in scandal, not in stature), Jason Giambi, just to name a few (see The Mitchell Report for a broader if yet legally unsubstantiated list). Then there are the former track stars, most recently Marion Jones, who have had to give back medals and Olympic glory.

So the home run record isn’t really the home run record, and Olympic medals are mostly earned and well deserved, but maybe some of them aren’t? How are we supposed to love, enjoy, and appreciate anything if we’re not sure it’s real or truly earned?

Back to Big Brown, here’s this great post I found that details the effects of steroids on horses. Note that when it comes to horse training, Winstrol is banned in 10 states, but not in the three where the Triple Crown races are held.

So in the end, it seems strikingly clear: Big Brown ran out of juice because he wasn’t having the juice pumped into him anymore. Kind of like a good ballplayer who goes on the stuff for a few seasons, racks up crazy stats, and then embarks upon a pronounced slide (see the home run spike years for Brady Anderson in 1996, Luis Gonzalez in 2001, and Adrian Beltre in 2004, to name a few that I would hypothetically but unofficially put in that category).

So we can’t trust professional athletes or sports or records anymore — another great American bubble burst, along with workers pensions and our foreign policy. And there are no repercussions, as fans continue to give away their hard-earned money to higher ticket prices (myself included). There is no sign of official punitive action to be taken by the leagues since punishment can’t be retroactive, and again, there is no smoking gun to be used as evidentiary support in a court of law (at least not yet).

Besides, who’s going to sue, Joe Smoe the Fan? I applaud Marc Ecko for buying Bonds’ historic ball and calling attention to its illegitimacy. But I repeat: we, the average fan, can barely afford tickets…

So I guess it’s not surprising that Big Brown was doped up, went on a tear, came down off his cycle, and failed in the end. And it’s not like Big Brown was clasping a syringe with his two front hoofs and jamming it in his own flank — his owners and trainers are to be blamed, not the horse. The horse is only a symbol in the end, and maybe there is a moral to this story, if not real repercussions (unless you consider the loss of millions of dollars in sponsorship and advertising and stud fees for the Big Brown camp, but that’s a different story).

But the moral could be: Cheaters don’t win and profit all the time, only most of the time. And fans will snarl and bitch and blog about it, but they’ll still watch and be fans. Because I’ll watch the Olympics this year and tell myself that all the medal winners are clean (hosted in China no less; talk about not knowing what to believe); and Lance Armstrong did win each and every one of those Tour de France trophies on the up and up. And I’ll watch all of the Triple Crown races again next year, Winstrol or no Winstrol; and I’ll watch Alex Rodriguez break Barry Bond’s home run record some day and pray he’s never busted for performance enhancing drugs, so maybe, just maybe, we’ll have a record we can hold up and believe in again.

And all the while I’ll watch American Gladiators and the occasional snippet of WWE and believe that maybe, just maybe, if I do as many sit-ups and push-ups as the these guys do that I’ll have pecs and abs and delts like them.

And in November I’ll even watch Election Night coverage and believe that there is no voter fraud going on anywhere and that the person that wins the election will be our rightful, democratically elected president

And at some point I’ll even ask myself, “If there were a drug, a shot or pill or serum you could take that would help you rack up a handful of Pulitzers and National Book Awards in the next fifteen years, and lead you into the nomination committee’s discussion for the Nobel Prize, would you take it?”

Would you? Would I?

And my answer would have to be, “Maybe — just maybe.”

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