Gail Luciani at the New Bolton Center posted today:
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" ... Beginning today, updates on Barbaro’s condition will be made weekly, unless there is a significant change to report.
June 12, 2006 ..."
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>>>I think that's good news! And here's a post-Belmont story that incorporates today's update as well, with a good little Q&A included:
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http://www.thehorse.com/viewarticle.aspx?ID=7073
Barbaro Treated to Carrots and Sugar Following TV Appearance
by: The Blood-Horse Staff
June 2006 Article # 7073
Because he continues to improve daily, Barbaro was allowed by his veterinarians to make a special televised appearance during ABC Sports' coverage of the Belmont Stakes Saturday, June 10.
"He is just fine and he has been enjoying some homegrown carrots and sugar cubes today," Dr. Corinne Sweeney, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine's New Bolton Center, said Monday. "We are very pleased with his progress."
Barbaro, winner of the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands, is recovering from a shattered hind leg sustained at the Preakness May 20, and remains in intensive care at the medical facility.
Dr. James Serpell, Marie A. Moore Professor of Humane Ethics and Animal Welfare, and head of Penn's Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society, answers the question:
Why does Barbaro continue to attract so much public attention?
Barbaro is the latest in a long line of equine heroes going as far back as Bucephalus, Alexander the Great's famous steed, who helped his owner found the Hellenistic empire before eventually dying of battle wounds in 326 BC.
Then there was George Armstrong Custer's horse, Comanche, reputedly the only US Cavalry survivor of the battle of Little Big Horn who was nursed back to health and became a national legend until his death in 1890, or Seabiscuit, the rags-to-riches racehorse, who made history and ultimately became the subject of a major motion picture.
Why do heroic animals inspire such intense emotions?
Partly, I think, because they perform their acts of heroism for us, and not of their own volition. While we may feel intense admiration and concern for human warriors and athletes who put themselves at risk of injury or death, our sympathy is always tempered by the belief that they were aware of the risks and were willing to face them.
With animals we cannot shelter realistically behind this assumption. The racehorse races because he is bred, and trained, and ridden for this purpose by humans, not because he chooses to compete with other horses at the racetrack. So a horse like Barbaro who gives his all for us, and who is maimed (perhaps fatally) in the process, is an immensely powerful symbol of self-sacrifice.
Here is yet another "take" on the possible brush with Brother Derek - more eyes have seen the video now and it's still inconclusive.
I hope Barbaro is loving his new cast today - no more itchiness for a while and the little aggravating heel rubs are gone, too. Atta boy!
*Apple wishes and peppermint dreams* for B today!
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/horseracing/bal-sp.barbaro15jun15,0,3240356.story?coll=bal-sports-horse
Barbaro's injury reviewed -- closely
Analysis of race video shows possible contact with Brother Derek; jockey Solis says 'no way'
By Sandra McKee
Sun reporter
Originally published June 15, 2006
Questions have been swirling for more than three weeks about how Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro broke his right rear leg in the May 20 Preakness Stakes.
The biggest one is: What happened?
Yesterday, Maryland Jockey Club president and chief operating officer Lou Raffetto showed The Sun the stewards' video of the Preakness frame by frame in his Pimlico Race Course office.
The tape shows what could have happened as Brother Derek got a late start from the gate and trailed Barbaro down the track. At about the eighth pole, Barbaro appears to have an open path to the front, but for some reason swerves to his right, into an opening for which Brother Derek is aiming.
When Brother Derek's jockey, Alex Solis, sees Barbaro directly in front of him, he sits back and puts all his strength into pulling up his horse. Just as the horses enter a shadowed area, a side view shows Brother Derek's right front leg and Barbaro's right rear leg coming close. The shadow, however, obscures a clear image of whether their legs came in contact.
But in the next instant, Brother Derek's head is pulled strongly right, Barbaro's head comes up and his jockey, Edgar Prado, realizes something is wrong and makes his first effort to pull up his horse.
"It sure looks like something happened there," Raffetto said. "But as I've said, you can't be 100 percent sure. We decided, because it wasn't definitive, not to make it public. What difference would it make anyway? It doesn't change anything."
The Maryland Racing Commission decided at its regular monthly meeting Tuesday that it will look at the tape.
When Prado visited Barbaro two weeks ago at the George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pa., he was asked whether Brother Derek made contact. His answer was as shadowy as the tape.
"Maybe he did and maybe he didn't," Prado said. "It's one of those things we'll never know for sure."
But Solis told The Bloodhorse Magazine on May 30: "There's no way he could have struck Barbaro; I would have felt it. We were close behind him, but not that close. Getting that close to him and going that speed, if I had struck him, I would have gone down."
The tape offers plausible alternatives, more plausible than the idea that Barbaro hurt himself in the starting gate, because the only thing that appears certain is that when Barbaro, who had another good day of recovery yesterday, broke from the gate he was a healthy racehorse able to run.
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