NEW YORK — A day after Big Brown failed to show the grit of a Triple Crown champion, Rick Dutrow Jr. didn't bother to show up at all. If the trainer knew anything more than the last time he was seen at Belmont Park, sitting on a rail and staring off in the distance, Dutrow was keeping it to himself.

Forget that business about the racing gods getting even. Big Brown's connections were plenty arrogant, but the only place supercilious behavior is avenged by supernatural wrath is in mythology tales. Besides, there were so many bad decisions made by the flesh-and-blood actors in this latest sporting drama that any intervention from on high would have been overkill.

Thorough examinations both after the race and again Sunday, revealed no obvious physical problems. The patch covering the quarter crack on Big Brown's front left hoof didn't play a role in his disappointing run, it did cost the colt three days of training between the Preakness and the Belmont.

Dutrow stopped just short of blaming jockey Kent Desormeaux's ride, but that, too, might have been overkill. Despite having the inside post position coming out of the gate, Desormeaux got pinched on the rail by eventual winner Da' Tara, then bumped as he tried to steer Big Brown wide, where his tactical speed could supposedly be put to best use.

Running on the outside of the pack, after all, turned out to be a brilliant maneuver at the Kentucky Derby. There, the colt broke from the No. 20th and last spot in the gate, stayed off the pace until the final turn and ate up the final stretch of the 1¼-mile race like he was out for nothing more strenuous than an afternoon jog. But those extra yards add up to considerably more when extended to a 1½-mile race like the Belmont. That's why Da' Tara stayed glued to the rail all the way around the tiring oval, and why 23 winners of the Triple Crown's final leg have come out of the No. 1 post position that Desormeaux let go of without a second thought.

Yet, for all the factors you could point to that contributed to Big Brown's disappointing run, it was something murkier and almost impossible to quantify that may have finally doomed the colt's chances:

Steroids.

Or more precisely, the lack of them.

Dutrow got skewered for acknowledging he gave his horses, including Big Brown, a shot of Winstrol each month, an old-school steroid that got Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson kicked out of the Olympics 20 years ago, especially after saying he had no idea how it might benefit his horses.

"I just like using it," he said when pressed, and referred any further questions on the subjects to his veterinarians. They had no problem providing that answer. As with two-legged athletes, it builds bulk, speeds up recovery, and feeds aggressive tendencies; in horses, it has the added bonus of stimulating appetites.

And since Big Brown lacked none of those qualities coming into the Triple Crown campaign, at least as far as Dutrow could see, he quit injecting the horse some three weeks before the Kentucky Derby. That's what Dutrow said just ahead of the Belmont, anyway.

"The horse looks like an absolute picture," Dutrow explained, "so I didn't want to mess with anything, you know."

That may have led him to cut down on Big Brown's dose of electrolytes, salts used to prevent dehydration, a training tip he got from his mentor, Hall of Fame trainer Bobby Frankel. If so, Dutrow's timing wasn't much better than it was in patching the quarter crack, since Saturday's race was run in withering 90 degree-plus temperatures.

Administering steroids to horses is legal in all three states where the classic races for 3-year-old thoroughbreds are run, but banned in 10 others. And rather than delivering the sport's first Triple Crown in 30 years, Big Brown's legacy may be helping rid the sport of their use altogether.

Alex Waldrop, president and chief executive of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, predicted Sunday that the colt's shocking performance would make it easier to extend the ban from coast to coast "to ensure the safety of the horses and to remove any suspicion concerning steroid involvement with our stars."

Instead of kicking off the party for a sport desperate to celebrate something, Big Brown's deflating finish will only occasion more self-examination. A Triple Crown win would have shoved questions about durability, breeding, safety and drug use into the background for at least another year. Instead, the wake-up call came at precisely the time the party was called for.

So if it was a hangover that kept Dutrow away from the barns Sunday morning, there's this small bit of consolation: He's got plenty of company.

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org