LEXINGTON, Ky. - In the statistics-oriented world of Gary Knapp, Ph.D., Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown is an outlier, a horse so unusual when compared with his peers that he appears out of place. In the field of statistics, an outlier often suggests that someone somewhere has made a mistake in calculations. But in Knapp's other world, the Thoroughbred breeding business, this particular outlier is a sign that his breeding calculations went exactly right. Knapp is a statistician, an economist, a former professor of marketing, and a businessman. He used a combination of biomechanical analysis and pedigree study to breed Big Brown. The colt was the first Grade 1 winner bred by Monticule Farm, the 650-acre farm Knapp owns with his wife, Emily. Big Brown's 4 3/4-length Derby win has fans dreaming of the first Triple Crown in 30 years. "This is good enough," Knapp, 64, said. "If he doesn't do well in either of the other two races, he's already done more than we ever could expect to come from a horse. If you look at a normal distribution of data, he's not an average horse. He's out here on the end someplace. You don't expect that of a horse." Knapp's connection to Big Brown goes back to 1998, when he bought a 6-year-old Lear Fan mare named Miasma for $350,000 at Keeneland's November mixed sale. Miasma was carrying a Nureyev filly, now named Mien, that would foal Knapp's Derby winner seven years later. Mien had only two starts and one win before Knapp retired her to his broodmare band, which now numbers 21. Despite her brief resume, Knapp had reason to believe the Nureyev filly would make a good producer. It wasn't just a gut feeling; it was biomechanics. Biomechanical analysis uses measurements of a horse's physical components - such as body length, heart-girth size, hip size, and stride - as well as projected growth patterns to predict the horse's probable performance aptitude and ability, based on its physical similarities to a database of horses. Knapp had so much faith in the technique, he acquired equity ownership in one of the leading equine biomechanics companies, Equix, in 2003. "From the time Mien was a yearling, based on the Equix measurements, we were highly confident that she was going to be a terrific broodmare because she physically was compatible with so many stallions in central Kentucky," Knapp said. "It was really unusual. "In my view," he added, "the race record of the mare has nothing to do with the mare. If you look at the mares I've bought, I think their total earnings are under $200,000. Many of them are unraced or unplaced, but every one of them, when Equix measures them, they say, 'This is a good broodmare.' " Pedigree also plays an important role. Knapp likes mares and their dams to be by sires with established success as broodmare sires. And he likes to mate his mares with stallions that not only match up well physically, but also provide good bloodline links. When he ran a hypothetical mating of Mien and the Claiborne Farm sire Boundary, a son of Danzig who is now pensioned, he saw a lot to like. "When I looked at Mien's pedigree, I saw a cross to Northern Dancer, I saw a cross to Damascus, and I saw a cross to Round Table," Knapp said. "When I looked at Boundary's principal runners, I saw several that are crosses to Northern Dancer. I saw one, maybe two, that had crosses to Damascus. And you see the same thing with Round Table. . . . All the probabilities were high." Big Brown's arrival on April 10, 2005, did not go exactly according to plan. After Mien's water broke that afternoon, farm manager Dominique Tijou discovered that her foal was upside down. It was not an emergency, but it was an unwelcome hitch. In an attempt to right the foal inside his dam, farm staff walked Mien up and down the barn aisle, returned her to her stall and let her roll, then repeated the process. Eventually, Tijou said, Big Brown emerged right side up. From that day forward, he proved relatively unmemorable in his days on the farm, Tijou and Knapp agree. That was partly because there were two other outstanding colts on the farm at the same time, both from Danzig's last crop and with flashier pedigrees. One, now named Plavius, sold to Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum for $9.2 million as a yearling but finished ninth in his only start so far. The other, Prussian, was a buy-back for $300,000 as a yearling and $625,000 as a juvenile; he now races for Monticule and is a Grade 3 winner. Big Brown, a plain bay who just quietly did everything right, didn't take the spotlight at first.