So Far, So Good for Barbaro

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

It took roughly a dozen seconds for the horseracing story of the year — if not the decade — to change tenor and flip from bubbly and bright to tragic. As is well known by now, undefeated Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro mis-stepped early in the 131st running of the Preakness Stakes and fractured his right hind leg. Dr. Dean Richardson, Chief of Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center described the injury in a statement, reporting that Barbaro suffered three fractures: one in the cannon bone above the ankle joint, a second in the long pastern bone located below the ankle joint, and a third within the ankle joint. It was also determined Barbaro also suffered a dislocation in the affected ankle joint.

The difficult surgery took place over the course of many tense hours at the George D. Widener Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The press crowded the lobby, the nation waited for news. When in recent memory has the world waited so raptly for the outcome of a surgery? When was the last time a hospital became the center of seemingly everyone’s hopes and worries? Far more people were concerned about Barbaro yesterday as he fought for this life than on Saturday, when he ran in the Preakness. It was a remarkable outpouring of concern.

Late last evening, the word came: The surgery is over, he’s in intensive care. So far so good.

That Barbaro made it to surgery at all shows a dedication to the horse’s health and a willingness to give him a shot at recovery that is rarely seen. Most horses afflicted with what was termed a “catastrophic” injury would not have made it to a hospital.

It’s a complicated business, fixing these fragile animals. Despite their substantial size and incredible power, it is as if horses are cobbled together from a collection of Achilles’ heels. There is a limited blood supply system to their legs, and if Barbaro’s arteries had been badly damaged, there would have been no way to send the necessary course of antibiotics to the area, no way to stave off gangrene.

To make matters worse, horses are not made to stand still. When Barbaro woke from anesthesia, he was no doubt frightened and wanted to run away. That would have killed him.

It happens all the time. But that doesn’t mean it’s “just part of the sport,” as has been suggested, and it certainly doesn’t mean that it must be. In Bill Nack’s excellent 1993 Sports Illustrated article about breakdowns, he estimated that a horse breaks down — either in racing or training — for every 22 races run.

It’s an unacceptable number, totaling thousands of horses every year.

Mostly, they are relatively unknown runners with only the simulcast cameras recording their collapse. But in 1999, 60 yards from the finish in the Belmont Stakes, Triple Crown hopeful Charismatic bobbled. His jockey, Chris Antley, tried to pull him up and stop him from running. Ttey were 100 yards past the finish line when Antley leapt off the horse, fell in the dirt, and popped up to hold Charismatic’s injured leg up off the ground so the horse could not compound the injury. He made it. Go For Wand was less lucky. That filly broke down horribly in front of the Grandstand in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Belmont in 1990. She leapt around the track, terrified, trying to stand on her shattered leg, which dangled and flapped with her every lurch. She was euthanized on the spot.

Ruffian. Never lost, never even saw a horse in front of her, and in a match race against Foolish Pleasure, again at Belmont, the black filly broke down and died.

And here we are again.

All day we waited. Fans, journalists, people who don’t care a wit about horseracing watched headlines flash across the wires. One read: “Freak accident has Barbaro fighting for life.”

Anyone close to racing knows that it’s not a freak accident. It’s only a worse version of an accident that happens all the time. Lawyer Ron walked back to his barn after the Kentucky Derby, and has since gone into surgery to repair a fracture. Sharp Humor, too, was injured in that race. The number of horses on the edge of breaking down, moments or steps away from a horrible, gruesome scene is uncountable.

Unless you simply figure that it’s all of them.

We don’t know why, but we know that the breed is weakening.

Thoroughbreds are bred for flashy speed and to look good in the sales ring so they can be sold at auction. This is a different type of breeding than the big old farms, with hundreds of acres of pasture and their long bloodlines, employed. The animal itself has become more fragile.

To keep the horses going, they are filled full of the diuretic Lasix (to stop bleeding in the lungs) and phenylbutazone, to reduce joint inflammation, and Corticosteroids, which reduce pain and inflammation. Then they run as fast and hard as they can. Nack wrote that they “strike the ground with splintering force, exerting a 12,000-pound load on the cannon bone alone.”

Still, they didn’t used to breakdown like this. We don’t know which of the many contributing factors is the cause of the current weak state of racehorses. But we need to find out.

Michael Matz and Barbaro’s connections did nothing untoward. They did not compromise their horse. Matz, in fact, is unusually sensitive to the needs and condition of his horses. This excellent horse broke down in a highly public way. We need to use this tragedy to motivate us to find out what’s killing our race horses.

The entire industry was ready to hang its hopes on Barbaro, its next hero, its big news, its Triple Crown contender. We should hang our hopes on him anyway. All day yesterday, thousands had this horse in their hearts. The industry needs to capitalize on this compassion, make real moves to sustain and preserve the equine athletes at the heart of the game. Perhaps if the industry worked to preserve our horses, and we had older horses running dozens of races, we’d have a fan base like the one that followed the heroic gelding John Henry around for his 83 races, rather than be left wondering what happened to last year’s hero.

Don’t leave Barbaro behind, whether or not he makes it to the breeding shed. Keep him with us, make him a champion of the sport as if he’d won the Triple Crown so many believed was his destiny. Use this tragedy to save some horses.


The New York Sun

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