It would still behoove horse racing to clean up its house. Big Brown’s non-performance in his biggest moment was so dismal — who’d he think he was, A-Rod? — as to make people wonder what the heck is up with the sport. Eight Belles is still dead, as is Barbaro, and there’s all that talk about steroids, which are legal in the sport, and the weakness and fragility that’s been bred into the horses.

The cleaner and healthier the base sport, the better it is for the big event. The more confidence people have in the way the animals are being treated, the bigger the audience for those three days when people actually watch, the more positive the coverage and commentary.

But none of it will make horse racing a major sport again. Kids don’t grow up going to the track with their dads. Most newspapers don’t even have racing writers anymore, and ESPN doesn’t run the results from Santa Anita as part of the nightly sports rundown. The only relic of the sport we have left are these three races, and we’re going to hang on to them because they are deeply connected with the way we keep track of the seasons; they’re a rite of passage from spring to summer.

It’s over, and had Big Brown won, we’d talk about it for a long time, but next Saturday, we won’t be watching horses we never heard of run around in circles. We’ll be watching the third round of the U.S. Open from Torrey Pines, because that’s how we mark Father’s Day weekend.

Slide show   Week in Sports Pictures Flying on the hardwood, racing on the rink, getting physical on the gridiron, and much more. more photos

And then it will be Wimbledon and then a solid two months of baseball and then tennis' U.S. Open, then the World Series and then football season and then the bowl games and the Super Bowl and March Madness and the Masters. By then, most of us will have forgotten who won the Belmont and beat Big Brown. I’m betting a lot of us have forgotten already.

It’s because the horses and the results, when you get down to it, aren’t that important. The event, the magic name — the Triple Crown — and the season keep us coming back. That’s not going to change.

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