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Barbaro


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http://www.thestar.com/Sports/article/176478

 

Grim reality of horse racing

 

Four champs never stood a chance Devastating on-track injury almost always means animal will die

 

Jan 31, 2007 04:30 AM

Cathal Kelly

Sports Reporter

 

"They give their lives for our enjoyment."

- Ron McAnally, horse trainer, after the breakdown of Go For Wand

 

Barbaro is the most recent in a line of champion thoroughbreds catastrophically injured on the racetrack. Go For Wand, Izvestia, Play the King, Ruffian are only a few of the others.

 

Almost all were deemed too badly damaged to rehabilitate and were put down soon after their injuries occurred. But Barbaro's owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, went to extraordinary and unusual lengths to save their horse.

 

That raises again the issue of how far we should go to save the life of a badly injured animal.

 

"When you're dealing with athletes, equine or human, you can't eliminate injures," said David Willmot, owner of Kinghaven Farms, which has produced several Canadian champion thoroughbreds. "And sometimes, treatment isn't feasible."

 

Barbaro, the undefeated Kentucky Derby champion, broke down in May shortly after leaving the starting gate in the Preakness Stakes. His injury –a fracture of the right hind leg that left the bones shattered like "a bag of crushed ice," according to one onlooker – would normally equal a death sentence.

 

But the Jacksons felt otherwise. Over a 36-week convalescence, Barbaro underwent several surgical procedures, including the insertion of 27 screws into his broken leg. He was fitted with casts and put in a sling to take weight off his legs. After developing laminitis, a potentially deadly inflammation of the hoof, in one foot and an abscess in the other, a last-ditch operation was attempted to insure he bore no weight on his injured right leg. It failed.

 

"We just reached a point where it was going to be difficult for him to go on without pain," Roy Jackson said soon after Barbaro was euthanized.

 

As of last night, the Jacksons were still considering an offer to bury their Derby winner at the site of his greatest triumph, Churchill Downs.

 

The treatment was expensive. The Jacksons raised $1.2 million (all figures U.S.) in donations to help defray medical costs. Even had he survived, Barbaro would not have been able to stand on his hind legs, making breeding impossible. So, from the outset, the goal was to turn a $30 million thoroughbred into a pasture horse.

 

"His owners went above and beyond the call of duty to save this horse," said David Switzer, executive director of the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association.

 

Willmot knows the pain that comes from losing a cherished animal. In a three-year span, he lost two Canadian horses of the year, Play the King and Izvestia, to serious injuries. "They were my two worst days in racing," Willmot recalled yesterday.

 

In both cases, Kinghaven's suffering horses were destroyed almost immediately. To the experienced racing hand's recollection, a quest like the one undertaken to save Barbaro is almost unprecedented.

 

"In 999 out of 1,000 cases of horses injured that badly, they're going to be put down," Willmot said. "(Barbaro) must have been a wonderful, kind, intelligent patient to put up with everything that they tried with him."

 

Willmot called Barbaro's long struggle before the final turn for the worse "amazing, impressive and heartening."

 

Even simple veterinary procedures are expensive when it comes to horses – removing a bone chip might cost $5,000. Routine surgery and convalescence can reach into the tens of thousands. Willmot can't even calculate what Barbaro's treatment might have cost.

 

"There's no financial reward for doing what they did. They did it because they loved the animal," Willmot said.

 

Here in Toronto, steps have been taken to reduce the on-track risks for horses.

 

Last July, Woodbine became one of only four racetracks in North America to switch from a dirt surface to PolyTrack, a synthetic material developed in England. According to Willmot, the primary purpose of the $10.5 million installation is to reduce serious injury to the horses.

 

"To use an analogy from football, with PolyTrack, the horse is at least able to wear pads," Willmot said. "It's much kinder and consistent."

 

Nevertheless, he warned, there is no way to eliminate tragedies, only to limit them.

 

The Jacksons and their team are still dealing with this one. Reflecting on the cost of Barbaro's fight, Gretchen Jackson said, "Grief is the price we all pay for love."

 

 

 

I thought Blitz might agree with some of the bold areas.

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Yes I could see how love would inspire you to put a horse through all of that so that he could never stand on his own.

 

 

 

I'm relatively sure you said that the owners attempted to save Barbaro so he could stud. It would appear that this assertion was incorrect.

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I think it is fairly clear that the definition of the word truth is no longer universal ... probably an effort to prevent anybody from being branded a liar.

 

What we have here...is a failure to communicate.

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It's a shame a horse gets more humane treatment than our elderly. Instead of letting them rot away feebled and in pain, they inject animals with a swift, quiet death. If humans could only be so lucky.

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