There is one reason to believe that this colt, unscathed through five races in which he demolished the opposition by a combined 39 lengths, can succeed where Silver Charm, Real Quiet, Charismatic, War Emblem, Funny Cide and Smarty Jones all fell short.

They are not Big Brown.

Trainer Kenneth McPeek thought of the recent failures and why some of them occurred — Real Quiet was nosed at the wire, War Emblem stumbled at the start, Charismatic broke down at the end — and then pondered Big Brown's oh-so-easy 4 3/4-length rout in the 133rd Preakness Stakes on Saturday.

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The jockeys' bright, shimmering silks will form a montage of colors after the starting gate snaps open. The fans' roar will all but propel the pounding hooves into the first turn at Pimlico Race Course.

There will be a wall of sound as the field turns for home. It will grow louder still if heavily favored Big Brown breaks free and takes another step toward becoming the 12th Triple Crown champion and the first since Affirmed in 1978.

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That's horse trainer Richard Dutrow Jr.'s stable-speak, his way of telling friends he expects his colt Big Brown to win the 134th Kentucky Derby on Saturday.

For Big Brown, undefeated but having raced only three times, the Derby (4 p.m. ET, NBC; post time 6:04) is a chance to validate the hype that has made such an inexperienced colt the favorite among oddsmakers to win the most prestigious event in American horse racing.

For Dutrow, 48, the Derby is all that and much more: a potential validation of an unlikely resurgence, in work and in life.

A decade ago Dutrow was at rock bottom, living in Barn 1 at New York's Aqueduct Racetrack and struggling to catch on as a trainer after a tragedy and a series of missteps. His girlfriend had been murdered in a Schenectady, N.Y., home while their toddler daughter was nearby. He had problems with drugs. And his father - a highly regarded Maryland horse trainer who would die of pancreatic cancer in 1999 - had disowned Dutrow, dismayed at the hard-partying son's inability to make something of himself.

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