In the nine hours of Breeders’ Cup telecasts last Friday and Saturday, the strangest segment by far came during a brief interview between comedic sportscaster Kenny Mayne and Michael Iavarone, president of the IEAH stable that owns a majority of Big Brown, when Iavarone said he and members of his family had been the subject of a death threat more than four months earlier on the morning of the Belmont Stakes.
Mayne opened the interview by saying Iavarone showed a lot of emotion after jockey Kent Desormeaux pulled Big Brown out of the race at the top of the stretch when the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner was hopelessly beaten.
Iavarone picked it up from there.
“The morning of the (June 7) Belmont Stakes, I had been woken up around 10 a.m.,” he told Mayne. "There was a knock on my door and there were several New York City Police Department detectives. They asked me to come outside because they didn’t want to talk to me in front of my family. They told me there had been a serious death threat lodged against me, basically from Tallahassee, Florida, from an extremist saying that if anything should happen to Big Brown in the race, myself and my family were not safe. Basically I was followed by eight to nine New York detectives all day, everywhere I went. Obviously after the horse was pulled up the rest is obvious.”
Mayne said ESPN/ABC learned of Iavarone’s story the day before the live interview aired and suggested that Iavarone’s emotional reaction to Big Brown’s defeat was “painted by that threat, not what the shortfall was of not winning the Triple Crown.”
“My immediate reaction was split in half,” Iavarone told Mayne. “Obviously there was concern for the horse and concern for my family. I was headed in both directions and both of them were catastrophic at the time. The first thing I did was grab my daughters and make sure we were out of the way and safe and tears were falling. It was just a terrible day for us.”
With 24 hours lead time before the interview, Mayne said ESPN/ABC “tried to contact the detective you said investigated the case and were unable to reach him.” He then asked Iavarone, “Did they ever follow up with you and say the case was closed? Do you feel comfortable now?”
“Obviously the horse is sound and is retired so I would not believe they would have any reason to harm myself or my family,” Iavarone said. “They have not told me the case is closed.”
The strange timing of Iavarone’s revelations notwithstanding, there are some details about his story that just don’t add up. I was seated directly behind Iavarone in the box section of Belmont during the running of the Belmont Stakes, and saw just one person who was clearly serving in a security capacity – a burly African-American man wearing a dark suit, an open collared white shirt and a “Big Brown” button on his lapel. It appears to be the same individual who has traveled with Iavarone to other races, including last weekend’s Breeders’ Cup.
Immediately after the race, while Big Brown was being unsaddled, I stood directly below the IEAH box and took a series of photographs of a shocked Iavarone, who was surrounded by his family members and fellow IEAH executive Richard Schiavo. There appeared to be no additional security around Iavarone and his family, only the same bodyguard described above. Certainly, I didn’t see “eight or nine New York detectives” in the immediate area.
I’m not accusing Iavarone of making up a story about a death threat. There were a series of incidents and revelations that made Iavarone something of a lightning rod with individuals within and outside of the racing community, some of which inflamed animal rights activities. There was the revelation that Big Brown raced legally on anabolic steroids when he won the Derby, the disclosure that Iavarone had lied about his past life as a “high profile banker on Wall Street,” the fact he had been fined and suspended by the National Association of Security Dealers, and the determination to run Big Brown in the Belmont despite suffering a quarter crack and missing training before the race.
Attempts by the Paulick Report to contact New York Racing Association officials to determine their knowledge of the alleged death threat and increased New York Police Department security detail were not successful.
Copyright © 2008, The Paulick Report
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