Racetrack Lenny

Prayers Are With Barbaro

Horse racing is a sport with dizzying heights and bottomless lows. Two weeks after Barbaro's authoritative truimph in the Kentucky Derby giving his owners/trainer the high of their lifetime, Barbaro suffered which might be a life threatening injury in front of millions watching worldwide. Barbaro appeared to be full of energy as he even broke through the starting gate creating a false start. He was collared about 100 feet from the gate and escorted back to the gate to be re-loaded so the race could begin. What transpired once the gates open is now widely known. Not even 100 yards into the race, something went drastically wrong and jockey Edgar Prado pulled up the reins trying to restrain Barbaro who was going sideways. Barbaro's right hing leg was flopping aimlessly as the hurt animal struggled to stay upright. Prado did a masterful job of preventing further injury. Some observations:

1. Many say the injury occurred when Barbaro broke through the gate. From any replay I saw, that seems unlikely since the horse, upon being led back to the starting gate, seemed to be putting pressure on his right hind leg and was in no apparent distress. That being said, I was amazed that the stewards just decided to load him in and go. In New York and New Jersey, a false start delays post time by 10 minutes and all horses are unloaded from the gate. The reason for that is two-fold. 1) It gives all other horses 10 minutes to warm up again so they are ready for a new start and 2) It allows the track veterinarians to do more than a cursory examination to see if there was any injury. These measures are in place to protect both horses and the betting public. Why Pimlico did not do this is a mystery to me.

2. Breaking through the gate is not as uncommon as one would think. The gates are held together with strong magnets and when the signal is given, the gate is de-magnetized thus opening the doors. Sometimes, the magnets aren't as strong as they should be and a horse can break through. All they know is that when the gate opens, they go. Barbaro tried to do that; but, credit jockey Edgar Prado to know that no one else was going and he quickly got Barbaro under control. The gate should be gone over with a fine tooth comb to make sure it is functioning properly.

3. Many say Barbaro was uncharacteristically "hyped up" for the race. I think that had as much to do with the zoo at Pimlico yesterday than with any foreboding of an injury.

4. I commented to a friend that I was amazed that the maintenance crews did not harrow the stretch after the tractor brought the starting gate to the head of the strecth. I expected to see the tractors with their harrows making the surface even--or the crew with rakes covering up the tire track marks left by both the tractor and the starting gate wheels. If you look at the slow motion replay, it seems Barbaro suffered his injury when he caught the wheel indentation in the track. Maybe I'm making more of this than I should; but, I can't imagine I was the only one who saw this.

5. The entire incident lends itself to an independent inquiry as to what went wrong. This was a horrific development that cannot be chalked up to "well, that's horse racing". We should be sure everything that could have been done to make this a safe race was done. If things could have been done better, then let's adopt those improvements so we minimize the risk of this ever happening again.

Our thoughts and prayers are with Barbaro, Michael Matz and the owners of Barbaro.

A sad day for racing and a very somber Preakness.

Racetrack Lenny

racetrack lenny went to the post at @ 8:42 PM