Posted on 01/29/2007 9:35:15 AM PST by lunarbicep
Bull,
Barbero was a physically mature horse. Very heavily muscled and trained. At 3 years old a TB is equivalent to a 16-18 year old human male. Full of energy and physically primed. A bad twisted an an ankle with over 1000 lbs of body mass chraging at 25-30 mph out of the gate. A twist with that mass on a slender ankle can result in shattered bones. A tragic mistep.
Barbaro was trained and raced lighter than any other horse going into the Derby and Preakness so he wasn't prestressed from too hard of a schedule.
A horse has to be trained early when still developing to get the density of the bone in the front cannon bones to withstand the forward momentum of racing at full speed. The bone actually is larger on the front stress loaded area of the cannon bones. Comparison xrays of horses trained at 2 yrs old and those who are not show very different bone density.
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