Sunday morning at Belmont Park was greeted with more heat, less traffic and no answers.

Hall of Fame trainer Nick Zito remained grateful and delighted a dozen hours after long shot Da’ Tara stole the 140th Belmont Stakes on the front end as heavy favorite Big Brown faltered, Zito’s second upset of a Triple Crown hopeful in five years.

“He is very good, very happy,” Zito said. “I was elated. I was jumping up and down because Big Brown wasn’t Big Brown. He wasn’t making his move. I started getting really excited. I figured, those other guys behind him ain’t Big Brown. I knew I was in good shape.”

Meanwhile, a hundred yards away across Count Fleet Road, Big Brown was given a brief walk around the shedrow shortly before 8 a.m. by exercise rider Michelle Nevin, who left soon after it was over. Trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. was not at the barn during training hours.

Instead of becoming racing’s 12th Triple Crown champion and first in 30 years, as many believed he would, none more so than Dutrow, Big Brown joined the list of horses to fall tantalyzingly short. He is the 11th horse since 1978 to win the first two-thirds of the Triple Crown, only to come up empty in the last and longest leg.

Michael Iavarone of IEAH Stables,

majority owner of the previously undefeated Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, said

everyone remained “perplexed” at Big Brown’s last-place finish, where he was eased across the finish line by jockey Kent Desormeaux. He had won his first five career starts by a combined 39 lengths.

“We looked him over good last night, after the race, and again this morning, and there’s nothing physically that’s shown up,” Iavarone said. “We’re just as confused as anybody. The only thing we’re resorting to is that the track might have been too deep for him. He just didn’t like it out there. He’s sound; he’s just angry.

“The horse that won, he beat that horse by 23 [1⁄2 lengths] in the Florida Derby, so I don’t know. We’re just going to watch him carefully, and make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

An endoscopic exam came back neg­ative on Big Brown, who raced with a patch over a healed quarter crack on his left front hoof. Iavarone felt neither contributed to his

effort.

“Nobody can figure this one out,” he said. “The horse did not displace. He scoped good. There was no mucus. His foot was ice cold. The quarter crack’s not an issue. There was a loose hind left shoe, but that’s not an issue. We’ve just to got to chalk it up to a question mark, at this point.”

For now, Iavarone said IEAH will go ahead with plans to keep Big Brown racing, with stops in the

$1 million Travers Aug. 23 at Sar­atoga Race Course and the Breeders’ Cup Classic Oct. 25 at Santa Anita.

Big Brown will be retired after his 3-year-old season to stand at Three Chimneys Farm in Kentucky.

“Our schedule now is as it was,” Iavarone said. “Unless something shows up in the next couple of days, we’re going to hope to maintain his regular training schedule, which would be breeze in a couple of weeks, and point for the Travers.”

Zito mentioned the Travers for both Da’ Tara and Anak Nakal, who dead-heated with Ready’s Echo for third in the Belmont. Trainer Todd Pletcher said Sunday that Ready’s Echo could also be Travers-bound, while Belmont runner-up Denis of Cork, who ran third in the Derby, has the Travers in his sights.

The Belmont victory was fitting for Zito and owner Robert LaPenta, who lost their top Triple Crown hopeful, 2007 juvenile male champion War Pass, to an injury early this year.

“One thing about this game, it doesn’t matter who you are.

Everyone is vulnerable,” Zito said. “That is why you have to count your blessings, and you have to keep going.”

The Belmont came in stark contrast to last year, when Rags to Riches outran eventual Horse of the Year Curlin in a stretch duel to become the first filly winner in more than a century. She was trained by Pletcher, who was shocked as the events of Saturday unfolded.

“I was kind of watching the race through my binoculars, looking at my horse and Big Brown,” Pletcher said. “I turned to my wife at the half-mile pole and said, ‘Big Brown’s in big trouble.’ It takes a little bit of the buzz off everything. You just kind of sit there with your jaw dropped. I think that this was the one that everyone felt like was going to happen.

“The Triple Crown is what it is because of how difficult it is. I think it’s more difficult every year. There’s so much focus on it.

Everyone’s there trying. You’ve got to have a very special horse, but as we saw from yesterday, you have to have everything go just right. Just anything going wrong can send it the wrong way.”