6 Minutes prior to post in the Preakness...

[imallin]

I\'m  not saying he looked lame. But, if the doctor says there was a pre-existing injury, i can\'t imagine the insurance company would say,\"ok here\'s your money\" without further investigation.

no insurance company is going to insure something for 25 or 50 million without having a million rules and regulations in place. They would look for ANY angle to not have to pay.

[TGJB]

Miff-- I would love to do footware studies. Problem is, though we\'ve asked for them many times, Equibase can\'t give us complete data  BECAUSE THE #&%$ TRACKS WON\"T GIVE IT TO THEM. We print it when we get it (NYRA and a few others-- and Ernie said some years what NYRA prints is not accurate, hence the guy doing the indian tracker immitation). But it would be wrong to assume the absence of fc in our data means the horse didn\'t have them. We don\'t know.

[alm]

The fellows who are throwing around their respect for the vet and their disdain for us amateurs are the amateurs here.

Go on line and google condylar fractures in racehorses.  You may learn something.

Jerry Brown is right on in his assessment.  There is a chance there was NO evidence left of the pre-existing tissue or bone damage in this horse\'s ankle once most of the bones and tissue down there were crushed in the breakdown.

Let me repeat: a condylar fracture occurs AFTER considerable tissue damage has already occured.  Barbaro was not likely to have suffered a condylar fracture during the race had he not had such damage beforehand.

The ONLY way to spot a condylar issue in advance is through a procedure called nuclear scintigriphy...a very expensive procedure that may or may not have been used on Barbaro.  This is probably the procedure Jerry is referring to with his own horse, in which its back \'lit up\' during the exam.

I am not guessing about this.  I have bred and raced horses for 25 years and have been through my share of EVERY problem, especially this one.  I have known more vets who were willing to medicate the pain than were willing to recommend spending thousands of dollars to pinpoint the problem.  

To repeat: the fracture in Barbaro\'s condylar happened first.  It was the loud noise Prado said he heard.  Instantly the horse took a bad step on his next stride, feeling the pain, and came down crooked on his sesamoid and pastern.  In the next several strides the pastern was nearly crushed.

This chain of events most likely did not start with a bad step.  It started with a pre-existing condylar problem.

Sorry to disillusion anyone, but this is going on in horseracing EVERY day.

[imallin]

Some tracks like Bay Meadows actually have shoe info. Who knows if thats correct or not.

I remember seeing one time at santa anita on a sloppy track, they announced all runners are wearing \'stickers\' except one. You guessed it, the \'plain shod\' horse ran off.

I know this is off subject a bit, but at some point i\'d love to see thoroughbreds weighed on their way to the paddock by a scale. Just a 2 second \'stop\' on a freight scale thats located near the paddock, weigh the horse, announce the weights and eventually have the horseweight in the pgm.

They weigh dogs, why not horses?

Thats another piece of info that the public isn\'t privy to.

[imallin]

Great post alm right on the money, couldn\'t agree more.

[SJU5]

Boys and girls:

I\'ve been in the horse ownership business for awhile and I\'ve lost a few that had the same, if not as severe, fractures. I\'m also in the medical field that treats athletes on a full time basis. Part of my job is to watch my injured college and professional athletes warm up prior to game time to make sure everything is a go before I give the decision to the coach that everything is OK.

Well guys...Saturday was not a go for Barbaro IMO. I did indeed watch him warmup closely and watched Prado\'s reactions to the many indications the horse was showing.

Go back and watch CLOSELY if you can the NBC tape of Barbaro/Prado walking with the pony horse prior to him being loaded. They cut to a commercial right AFTER the incident I\'ll describe.

He was walking right to left along the fence on the TV screen, where the pony rider makes a sharp left hand semi-circle turn to head back to the gate. As soon as Barbaro was almost to the 180 degree he shifts his weight to the right and Prado suddenly looks down to the right, then to the left, and then to the right again, obviously looking for something. He then sits upright and then 3 steps more Barbaro takes a short hop and stagger steps. Now Prado looks down again to check-right-left-and right again. See\'s and feels nothing and continues and then NBC cuts away.

I firmly believe that Brabaro caught an ankle or hit a small hole, spraining the ankle joint. Then when he busted the gate, he stretched the ligament more, and then 100 yards into the race, the ankle became unstable and dislocated 1st then fractured. This is the usual pattern of injuries. You need the ligament/tendon component to be intact to prevent dislocations.

I believe Barbaro did give subtle clues that he was amiss, but being taped front and rear, it gave him enough support to walk to the gate. If he did this PRIOR to the warmup jog, Prado would have known something was wrong. But, unfortunately, the sequence was reversed, he sprained AFTER the jog I believe. Imagine driving down the road at say 30-40 mph. Nice and smooth. All of a sudden you feel something under the car, and you suddenly look out your left mirror, rear mirror and right to see what you might have run over. Seeing nothing you continue to drive. But 15 seconds later you feel the same bump...you now for sure check all the mirrors and maybe pull over! Thats the reaction Prado gave while he checked, not once, but twice after Barbaro make those quirky moves 10-15 seconds apart.

Now, this is not only my feeling, but other owners who called in to the Capital OTB show Sunday morning. The technical crew did indeed get the NBC tape on the air this exact time as I discussed and they replayed it 3-4 times on air. The commentaors watched it intently and they agreed that something might have occured then.

We\'ll never know for sure...but I would not blame Prado. If you are baseball fans...go back 2 weeks ago with that Zambarano on the mound. He came into the game with a sore elbow (partial tear) that he only told Pedro Martinez about. He then continued to throw...felt a strain, told the trainer and manager he was OK...and threw ONE more pitch where he completely tore the ligament/tendon complex right off the bone and fragmented a small bony chip in the elbow.

And with all those small fractures and the dislocation ligament tear of the ligament/tendon complex...there\'s no way any MD/DVM can say for sure what came first, the sprain/dislocation or fracture to Barbaro.

[davidrex]

Best piece of information I\'ve read on a topic of this nature.
ALM,your my new hero...really

[miff]

Jerry,

Thanks anyway and I\'m sure you agree that a shoe study could help us.Personally, I kinda know which trainers use them all the time but I have no confirmation except for your symbols.

Re NY Tracks only, they always post it on the equipment board and do a crawl for the inhouse tv feed but I guess it would be cumbersome for your trackman to have to copy it all down.


Mike

[TGJB]

Miff-- we get what\'s posted at NYRA. But as I understand it, the stickers can be anything from new and sharp to worn down and virtually flat-- that\'s what Ernie\'s guy is looking for. And they\'re listed the same.

[davidrex]

Now SJU5 comes out with a terrific view...really
Combine the reality of current procedures with the possibility of a triple crown(immortality)... now you have a situation that played out well within the ability to foresee a break down.

[Michael D.]

Ron,


Would you conclude that this was the result of a preexisting condition, something that the connections of Barbaro must have known about?

[miff]

From DRF,


On Monday,Prado said,

\"If I felt something was wrong I would have been the first person to scratch the horse.There was no indication at all that there was anything different from the Derby. I still can\'t believe it\"


In another segement when questioned about looking down he said something to the effect that he was checking to see if Barbaro pulled or twisted a shoe.

I wonder if Prado would possibly risk his own life riding a horse he felt was unsound or maybe he could not feel the unsoundness.People here are claiming to have seen all these signs yet a guy who rode thousands of races didn\'t.

Mike

[alm]

Your description of what happened pre-race might explain what you think happened during the race or it might explain what I think could have happened in terms of a condylar issue.

I don\'t think you crack the condylar from a misstep as opposed to the condylar fracturing first, causing a misstep.  Watching the rerun reminded me of a horse of mine who fractured the condylar at the head of the lane.  She pitched ever so slightly to the side it broke on, then continued to run in a straight line.

She didn\'t break anything else as a result.

Regardless, there is little doubt in my mind, as a breeder-owner, that this horse was in trouble before the race.

[sighthound]

>> as was the one that mentioned the \"nuclear scan\" (don\'t remember the >>technical name of the device). That thing is a godsend-- if you suspect a horse has a problem (in my case by looking at the sheet) but can\'t find it, you have him scanned, and \"hot spots\" light up.

Nuclear scintigraphy. Extremely valuable for finding \"potential problems\" in horses in work, it does indeed \"light up\" hotspots - before they show any sign of lameness.   This goes to the microfractures that normally occur with bone remodeling during training, and the condylar fractures discussed.  You need bone remodeling - that\'s what builds stronger bone.

In Barbaro you have a horse that was bred and trained \"the right way\" for the classics - he didn\'t do 10 and 3 at 18 months in a training sale (I wish the 2-year-olds in training sales would go away).  He had tons of long, slow distance gallops to build endurance and strong bone (longer than most, look at his training regimine), appropriate speed work (speed kills), was raced early on turf (more forgiving than dirt), plenty of turnout time and grass gallops at Fair Hill, raised naturally in a field by his breeders for longer than most running with other young colts (builds strong bone and agility, athletic ability), didn\'t get pumped up with Winstrol to be muscled up for a successful sale as a yearling, was bred for distance and endurance....

A horse takes one bad, uneven step - theres a little fracture through a sesamoid, or through the edge of the condyle.  Now the suspensory ligament is compromised (with the sesamoid), or the supporting structure of the leg isn\'t 100% (with the condyle)   Horse doesn\'t feel it.  Next two strides blows the fracture away from the bone.  Now the leg can\'t bear weight normally at all - but the horse is still at 40mph.  Next three strides tears the ligaments, shatters the pastern ...

I have no problem at all thinking \"one bad step\"

[miff]

Sight,


You agree with Dr Richardson re Barbaro \"This is a single catastrophic accident.\"



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