Conspiracy lovers see two false starts (BARBARO INJURED BEFORE PREAKNESS ???)

If the doors of perception were ever cleansed, the major event attendant to the 2006 Preakness might make a little more sense.

Of course, if thoroughbred racing's doors of perception were ever thoroughly cleansed, the parimutuel part of the game probably would no longer exist. Only the gentried shooing flies and imbecilic bottom clockers would remain.

Instead, an industry constantly trying to tether itself to the major American sports leaderboard once again finds itself in the midst of another plow-out after the near- fatal racing injuries suffered by Kentucky Derby champion Barbaro last Saturday at Pimlico Race Course.

On Thursday, the colt was reported to be continuing his recovery on the uptick at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pa. According to chief veterinary surgeon Dean Richardson, "Barbaro is progressing nicely, has totally normal vital signs and is in excellent condition.''

Said Corinne Sweeney, executive director of the Widener Hospital at the New Bolton Center: "It was another boring day, which is all we want for him right now. Boring day upon boring day while his recovery moves forward.''

But like love and carriage, horse and marriage, racetracks and conspiracy theories are a match made in a dramatist's heaven. It was not by mere coincidence that Oliver Stone chose ominously opaque ovals as the backdrops for critical scenes in both "JFK'' and "Nixon.'' As breeding grounds for suspicion and rich-men-gone-Machiavellian, racetracks historically are Z-number-one, top of the heap.

The central pegs for conspiracy theorists studying video replay of NBC's coverage of the final moments leading to the Preakness and Barbaro's dart with death are reasonably compelling: Why didn't attending veterinarians employed by the Maryland Racing Commission make a more thorough examination of the star colt after he prematurely broke through the starting gate? And why didn't they err on the side of caution and scratch the horse?

The total elapsed time from the instant Barbaro breaks through the gate (at 1:15:42 of the NBC telecast) until he is jogged back, ostensibly examined and the race begins (at 1:17:01) is 1 minute, 19 seconds. A key live portion of that span -- when David G. Zipf, chief veterinarian for the Maryland Racing Commission, insists he examined the colt thoroughly enough to predict a safe run -- is not available on the NBC tape because the network opted to replay Barbaro breaking through the gate.

Instead, only live observers closest to the Pimlico starting gate saw what actually happened. And Zipf has told multiple reporters that all was as normal as could be under the extraordinary circumstance, noting: "I went through the stall he was in and followed him back around. Once he was gathered up [by an outrider] and turned around, the first thing I looked for was head trauma or abrasions or cuts. I then walked behind him as he trotted back to make sure, leg-wise, that there was no problem.

"I could see nothing that would insult his performance. [I] saw no problems with his head or legs. I'm certain there was nothing that would predispose to the injury that occurred in the race.

"We want people to know the circumstances so we can eliminate speculation that isn't warranted. I don't want there to be any gray areas about what we do.''

Had there been any sign of blood anywhere on Barbaro, according to thoroughbred-racing experts in Maryland and Illinois, the colt would have been scratched. Whether there was developing bruising to a front leg that might have contributed to the disaster has not been commented on by any of the principals in the saga.

But in the minutes when an injured Barbaro was being returned to the stakes barn on the Pimlico backstretch, retired Hall of Fame jockey/Preakness analyst Gary Stevens told the NBC audience: "One thing that happens so often -- if there is a front-leg injury -- perhaps he was trying to get off something on the front end and put too much stress on the back end to cause this problem. But that's all speculation.''

The amount of pressure it took Barbaro to break the starting gate also has been overstated in some quarters. Industry experts say a mere 30 pounds of force is enough to pop the barrier.

Equally speculative is the weighing of factors that could have induced Zipf to order a scratch during the brief interval between Barbaro's false start and the opening bell. While such a decision would have come across as positively Churchillian in its depth of instantaneous courage and nobility, the move also would have arbitrarily ended the annual pursuit of a Triple Crown -- the Holy springtime Grail of racetrack marketing.

A veterinarian's scratch also would have forced the refund of millions of dollars wagered on Barbaro and added to the growing image of Pimlico as a haunted and scary thoroughbred venue.

What can't be overstated is the amount of sheer luck that played into the rapid stabilization of Barbaro and his quick transport to the New Bolton Center. The colt caught an enormous break when no skin was broken despite his triple fracture. Had there been any ripped outer tissue, his chances of survival would have dropped to 10 percent, according to equine medical authorities.

Also, with the Baltimore police clearing an exit path in the congested neighborhood around Pimlico, Barbaro made the 73-mile trip to the Widener Hospital in less than 90 minutes. The trip was a reverse of the same one Barbaro had made the previous morning from the Fair Hill Training Center in nearby Elkton, Md., to Pimlico, so some have suggested the specter of a return home might have helped calm the damaged horse.

The hospital is also the only one in the mid-Atlantic region with a water pool for post-op recovery, Richardson said. That greatly assisted Barbaro in the hours after his six-hour surgery Sunday. And a huge positive, Sweeney said, has been the colt's intelligence and comprehension of events.

"Some horses fight treatment, often with fatal consequences,'' she said. "Others, like Barbaro, understand that you are trying to help them.''

''All we want,'' said Gretchen Jackson, who co-owns Barbaro with husband Roy and sits on the 24-member board that oversees the New Bolton Center, "is for him to lead a pain-free life.''

Perhaps out of the darkness, thoroughbred racing's doors of perception will be cleansed.

Thanks for the information..I gather, if I understood correctly, that the real danger of AI is that one stallion, which could turn out to have a defect of some sort, could thus sire an awfulmlot of horses, and thus skew the bloodlines. But why couldn't they set up a arbitrary limit as to the number of times it could be done each year...seems to me it would be better for the horses...a mare in California, has to be shipped to a stallion somewhere else..more accidents/injuries occur with horses in transit t han any other time..

61 posted on 05/26/2006 5:56:42 PM PDT by ken5050 (GWB, Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, freed hundreds of millions.# of Nobel PeacePrizes: ZERO)

Isn't that interesting? I knew they were probably having to do something to adjust the weight but I didn't know what.

There may be a lot of reasons, but really I think it is tradition more than anything backed up by some of the other reasons .

There is also a legal commerce reason to limit breeding to live cover. Apparently, if a breed registry allows AI, they can no longer restrict other breeding methods such as embryo transplant, cloning, etc. This was based on a court case against AQHA. The Jockey Club does not want to get embroiled in all that mess.

65 posted on 06/05/2006 7:32:58 PM PDT by ken5050 (GWB, Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, freed hundreds of millions.# of Nobel PeacePrizes: ZERO)

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