The Preakness goes off this evening at 6:14 pm EDT. Barbaro will take his second shot at the field.

Barbaro was such a huge winner at Churchill Downs, it is hard to believe that there isn't a solid Triple Crown chance this year. As my sister (a bit of a Triple Crown historian) said -- the Derby looked a lot like Secretariat's 1973 race. The ending was over when the horses rounded the final turn and hit the homestretch. Secretariat blew away the field in all three races that year.

I would love to see our first TC winner in the last 28 years. I thought for sure Funny Cide was going to win the whole thing. Until the rains fell all day at Belmont that year. He was a speed horse and was actually ahead late in the race. But the mudders cauught him and ruined the excitement.

Barbaro enters the race undefeated and a clear favorite.

Sad break (no pun intended) for Barbaro. First he broke through the gate and then broke his leg coming out of the gate. Once again, no Triple Crown winner.

This is just a very bad outcome for what I thought was a sure triple crown champion. He was an easy KD winner, but it wasn't meant to be.

He has a fracture above and below the ankle, so his chances of making a recovery are very slim, but I expect he will have to be put down. How very sad too.

My heart goes out to the owners, trainer and stable hands, I am sure this is going to be a tremedous loss.

I missed watching the Preakness live yesterday and only just saw the replay this morning. A sad ending for Barbaro.

Merely watching the highlights, as when Barbero kicks his rear leg outward, is quite painful but I have a question. The reporter said that if Barbero's leg does not heal perfectly, he won't be able to be put out to stud but did not explain why. Anyone know why a horse with an imperfectly healed leg could not be used for stud purposes?

~Adam

I am wondering the same thing. I would be surprised to know that they have already not collected semen from him- especially after the Derby victory.

It would just make sense- but I don't know if that is a feasible thing for horses- and frankly- I really don't want to know eek!

Adam, the reason is that a horse will get infections or other complications if they can't get it set right and keep the weight off the injury. This might sound easy, but a horse weighs 1400 or 1500 pounds and to get them off their injured legs is not easy. The vet has to get it so that he can stand, yet will allow him to put some weight on it without causing more injury.

Not to mention, they sleep laying down and try getting up if you weight that much and only have one hind leg that can bare weight.

I read today that he has both a fracture above and below the ankle, in addition to a sesamoid injury. All of which can be fatal in a horse because it prevents the blood supply from getting to the area and then you get the deadly infections. As I said earlier, I wouldn't be surprised to see him put down, as bad as that sounds. I had a thoroughbred who broke down on the track with a fractured sesamoid, but the vet told me he was nothing he could do to save him.

As for breeding, you cannot use artificial insemination in a thoroughbred as you can with other breds. The breeding has to be done live cover, which means the mare and stallion have to come together and let nature call.

That is why he has no value as a stallion if he cannot recover. I am sure they are going to do whatever they can to save him, and I sure hope they are successful.

Such a sad day yesterday. I was so excited for Barbaro to win the Preakness and ramp up for the Belmont. It was just sad to see him limping on the track, and to see all of those associated with him in such emotional distress. After reading "Seabiscuit", it became clear that these horses become a part of the whole family with the owners and trainers.

I just read that Barbaro has survived the seven hour surgery and is up and standing. A major issue (as pointed out previously) is that he has to be able to stand and put some weight on the leg.

The surgeon said that he does not see injuries like this because the horse would normally be put down on the track. The fact that Barbaro is still alive is largely due to his pedigree and the money his owners can spend on his recovery.

I hope he continue to improve and is able to live a long and happy life in retirement.

That is good news! I don't know what the cost is for that type of surgery, but I am willing to bet it is $50,000 or more. I had a chip taken out of a filly on both knees and it cost us almost $6,000.

As the vet said, if he wasn't worth a lot of money alive, he'd have been put down already and saved the severe pain I'm sure he's in at the moment.

Come on Barbaro, don't do anything foolish like trying to kick off your cast and bandages, be a good patient and get healthy.

It will be a long time before we know if Barbaro will survive his very serious injuries.

Globe and Mail - Barbaro's injuries

Todd, thanks for the information. I didn't know thoroughbreds had to perform their duty naturally. If Barbero is unable to recover, would it be possible for him to artificially inseminate non-thoroughbreds or do thoroughbreds mate with other thoroughbreds exclusively?

~Adam

At first they said it was just two fractures. Now they're saying that when they opened his leg, there were more than 20 fractures. I was at the race on Saturday and Barbero broke down right in front of where we were sitting. It was a horrible thing to see. I was sure they'd have to put him down immediately. The jockey did an incredible job pulling up on the horse and getting him stabilized as quickly as he did. Even though he made it through the surgery, they're saying his chances of survival are still just 50-50. I guess it all depends on the blood flow to the injured area. Apparently, blood flow to a horse's legs isn't great in the best of circumstances.

Yes, he can be bred to a quarter horse mare artificially, but the foal will be considered a QH and cannot run against TB in a race that is restricted to just TB. Since he is bred to run long and on turf, he would't be an ideal TB stallion for a QH mare, since they top out at a 1/4 mile and run very few races over 870 yards, which is roughly a half mile. Not to mention, I've never seen a KD winner bred to a QH before, now that would be quite funny.

They have a picture of the x-ray taken after the Surgery, that is one heck of a site. We'll know more about his condition in the next week or so, the longer he goes the better his chances. Getting the blood to the area and him bearing weight on the leg will go a long way in helping him recover.

get well soon, barbaro.

I saw that race. What happened to Barbaro was sad. I said last year that there would never be another Triple Crown Winner. Seems like most win either the Derby and the Preakness and have nothing left for the grueling mile-and-a-half-Belmont, or they either skip/lose the Derby and then win the Preakness and the Belomont. That's the pattern now. The best horse in the last five years was Aflett Alex in my opinion, but he got caught up in a speed duel at the Derby last year and allowed the closers to catch him. The only way you can lay down a 1:09 and change at 6 furlongs and still be there at the finish is if there's no good closers in the race or if the horse is a real stud like Secretariat.

MSNBC is reporting Barbaro was euthanized this morning:



very sad to hear - though it is amazing the horse lasted this long.

MSNBC Coverage

I've spent hours trolling horse racing message boards and racing wires for months trying to follow Barbaro's recovery. I was hoping he would pull through, since his handlers were doing everything they could. Really sad to hear he didn't make it. In an ideal world, he could have been another Secretariat.

Terrific run by Big Brown (from the 20th gate) in yesterday's Kentucky Derby. But tragic that Eight Belles (the second place horse) had to be put down after breaking both front ankles after finishing the race.

PETA is calling for the suspension of Eight Belles' jockey:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/more...s.ap/index.html

Can someone remind me exactly it is about horse racing that makes it so much more "humane" than dog racing, cockfighting, etc?

PETA is after media attention. They don't have a rats ass about that horse - all they care about is getting their cause in newspapers, news talk radio, and on television.

What, are horses on the juice now? Eight Belles' trainer orders drug tests to prove filly was not on steroids.

I just have to say that the death of yet another horse at a big derby race is very sad for me. I love horses so much. I have been riding since I have been basically been old enough to walk. It is a time when I feel most relaxed. I have relatives in Wayne, PA who have horses and I grew up spending many of my weekends having my alone time riding with my horse. They are just amazing, beautiful animals and it just really pains me to see a horse go down in this way. I cried my eyes out during the Barbaro special on HBO. I don't know...there have been way too many of these incidents over the past few years and I'm torn because I grew up going to these kinds of races. They were a part of my upbringing. I can totally respect PETA's and other people's position that its inhumane though. Its just an overall sad situation which totally cast a dark cloud over the Kentucky Derby this year.

You said it Terp. I grew up in a horse town too, though it was harness racing. I've loved the Triple Crown since I was a kid and still buy the Racing Form every Derby Day. But something is obviously not right -- or more not-right than ever -- in the racing world right now.

I had an engagement this Saturday that prevented me from seeing the Derby and throwing or attending a party for it. Now I'm glad I didn't.

Looking at the Racing Form after the events, I was struck by the fact that notes on Eight Belles said her sire had chronic hoof problems. It's great that Patricia Nell Warren contributes here, and I think she's hinted that it's breeding issues, not tracks or doping, at the heart of these early deaths.

One sad irony was that Eight Belles was euthanized the same weekend or day that the obituary of Ruffian's owner ran in the New York Times. The then-undefeated Ruffian's death in that mid-70s race against Foolish Pleasure (sort of a Battle of the Sexes, but for horses) is probably still the most widely-seen instance of a fatal injury.

The thing about these more recent fatal injuries to top horses is that they aren't isolated. The same year (I thnnk) that Barbaro died, the nation's fast sprint horse, Lost in the Fog, also died. Because Lost in the Fog hailed from the Bay Area, which doesn't have much of a racing rep, I had been following his long undefeated streak. To go from win after win to a loss and then soon a death is heartbreaking in way that other sports don't really match.

Barbaro breaking down in the Preakness last year was horrific. That horse had shown amazing heart in its races. It makes me wonder and worry about Big Brown who is similarly talented but inexperienced. The tension of these Triple Crown races should be about who will win, not whether the horses will survive.

2 down, 1 to go: Big Brown cruises to victory in the Preakness.

Well..the boyfriend and I went to Baltimore to watch Big Brown win the Preakness and I think this is the year we'll have a Triple Crown winner. I said the same thing the year with Smarty Jones and it almost happened but this year I've got that feeling again. Gonna have to go to the Belmont Stakes and hope that history is made. So glad there were no tragedies on the track this time around. Lets hope things remain the same for the Belmont Stakes.

PS I don't know how people do the "in field" thing at these horse race things. I did it one year at the Preakness when I was 20 and clearly unaware of the hot mess it was. Its basically a trailer trash sandwich but people swear by doing the in field every year. More power to em.

I agree about Big Brown, Terp. This horse is something special. The very instant that he's called on to really run he leaves all other horses in the dust. None of his races have even been close, including the jam-packed Derby.

Big Brown wasn't even running his hardest at the Preakness, so he's less likely to be tired the way that Smarty Jones was come Belmont time.

One other thing about Big Brown: it's funny how this horse really seems to love (media) attention. Before the race when the horses were being led around infield, he literally stopped in his tracks to look directly at the cameras.

Too bad about Big Brown. I rushed home from the Jays game on Saturday to catch the race, but it was not to be. Pulled up at the top of the stretch, jockey Kent Desormeaux said he "had no horse." Winner Da'Tara was a 38-1 long shot (Big Brown was at 1-4, and a commentator on ESPN radio suggested that many people were probably buying $2 win tickets so they could sell them on E-Bay the next day should Big Brown become a Triple Crown winner).

While I suppose it would have been fun to have a triple crown winner, I was glad it wasn't Big Brown. Nothing personal (or horsenal?) against him but that trainer is such and uber-douche that I just couldn't bring myself to root for Big Brown.

You said it. Dutrow really hung himself with that boasting big mouth. I liked the horse a thousand times more than the trainer. The people attached to Smarty Jones a few years back were easier to root for.

You know, normally you check a horse's coat just before the race to see how it'll run. Big Brown looked realxed as can be all the way to the gate, but completely fractious only seconds after stepping out of it.

Dutrow, on the other hand, sweat all the way through all of his light blue dress shirt loooooong before the race started. By the end of the coverage, when the camera caught him loosening his tie, it seemed like a noose. So maybe I'll start checking trainers for signs of nervous sweat.

Especially since winning trainer Nick Zito -- who was a lot more arrogant and annoying a few years back -- was relaxed and informative doing analysis for ESPN before the Belmont. He sure knows how to spoil the Triple Crown!

I've owned race horses for the last 10 years and can say he looked liked a tired horse after the race. Lots of chatter about an injury by the TV personalities, but with Kent D easing him up down the stretch should have shut them up on the spot. The quarter crack was not an issue either, I've run a number of horses with them and performed as expected. I've had horses get a stone bruise the few days leading up to a race and end up scratching. I can feel for the owners of Casino Drive, been there before.

They don't give a tripple crown away and 3 races in five weeks is a tough thing to do. Give him a few months off and he'll be back to the one we say his first 5 races.

Hope he comes out to SA for the Breeders Cup! I'm going this year and want to see a Curlin/Big Brown showdown.

This "says" it all.

Total bummer. Now I'm not upset that the BF (who was battling a bit of food poisoning this weekend) and I didn't go. But my mother called me when she saw the guy being interviewed before the race and how he was saying that everything was fine. She called and said "that guy is lying through his teeth". She said there was just something about him that led her to believe he was not being truthful. There is something certainly strange going on with it. They had to ease him up at the top of the final turn. The whole explanation just sounds very shaky.

Big Brown's trainer Rick Dutrow is in more trouble for doping horses.

All these past violations and indiscretions and he's facing only a 15 day suspension? Ridiculous.

What a performance by 50-1 Mine That Bird to win the Kentucky Derby.

Just saw this report on CNN about how Pimlico, home of the Preakness, is falling on hard times.

Jockey Calvin Borel wins the first and second legs of the Triple Crown, albeit on different horses. The filly Rachel Alexandra takes the Preakness ahead of a charging Mine That Bird.

Both Rachel Alexandra and Mine That Bird proved their worthiness yesterday. Alexandra for winning, of course. Mine That Bird ran good enough to win, but wasn't as fortuitous with traffic as he was in Louisville.

I remember reading about the track having problems back in 2002 when I was working in Baltimore for 9 months, so whatever is in that report either is nothing new, or things have gotten worse. As I recall there's a push in Maryland to do what Pennsylvania did, by allowing racetracks to put in slot machines.

There is no Triple Crown hope going into the Belmont, but to me at least, this year has brought horse racing's best Triple Crown races in years.

In the cases of Barbaro and Eight Belles, it's obvious why those years are tragic ones. But 2008 was especially bad because of Big Brown, a Bush-era horse who turned out to be Bogus Brown with his lame non-doped performance in the Belmont. His mouthy cheating trainer added an extra bad taste.

This go-round, you could say the little guy has triumphed in at least a couple of ways -- and a filly won this weekend.

Mine That Bird's long shot win in the Derby was thrilling to watch if you know the sport. Calvin Borel's jockeying was terrific. It was case of the little guy, the jockey, winning the race with a crafty ride. He had the best horse, though. With all the huge money going into other horses, it was thrilling to see an unheralded one blow by the field and leave them far in the dust.

The quirk of the Preakness was that Borel didn't stay on Mine That Bird, but opted to ride the filly and Kentucky Oaks winner Rachel Alexandra because he thinks she's best. Indeed, she won, but Mine That Bird was about to blaze by her at the finish line. Though he'd won the race, Borel seemed almost chagrined he hadn't won it in better style or more decisively. It was a nice irony.

It's been a while since I've been a fan of a horse but I gotta say I love Mine That Bird's come-from-waaay-behind racing style. It's the style of some of my fave horses in the sport, like Alydar. A style that's exciting to watch, and usually seems to demonstrate extra heart. Definitely looking forward to the Belmont.