Posted on 05/25/2008 11:04:15 AM PDT by gate2wire
Big Brown, who will be seeking the coveted Triple Crown in the June 7 Belmont Stakes (gr. I), has a "slight" quarter crack on the inside of his left front foot, trainer Rick Dutrow said Sunday, May 25.
Dutrow said he noticed a small spot on the colt's foot Friday afternoon and notified hoof lameness specialist Ian McKinlay, who treated it. By Saturday, it had turned into a slight quarter crack, five-eighths of an inch long. McKinlay applied iodine solution and said he’s confident it is very minor. He will “lace it up,” and if everything is good, the colt will on the track for full training by Thursday.
"The horse is in no discomfort, he doesn’t even know anything is wrong," Dutrow said. "He is trying to figure out why he is not going to the track, and he has been tough to walk. Missing a few days of training is not going to hurt us at all. If I can work him on Tuesday before the Belmont, that would be perfect. Or even Wednesday would be good."
"This injury is nothing remotely close to the two foot injuries he had last fall and winter," McKinlay said. "Those were wall separations and were very tender. This is just a straight quarter crack that will pretty much heal by itself."
(Excerpt) Read more at tcm.bloodhorse.com ...
Big Brown missed three days of training last week after the quarter crack was discovered. McKinlay inserted steel sutures to pull the crack together a week ago, allowing Big Brown to resume training.
LAST PLACE. 38 TO 1 WON!
“LAST PLACE. 38 TO 1 WON!”
$2220.00 double...woo hoo.
“Don’t know exactly what it is, but these horses get quarter cracks, they don’t win.
Trainers say it’s OK, vets say it’s OK, owners say it’s OK...horses don’t win with quarter cracks.
Maybe this horse is good enough against a weak field, could happen...I’m not going to take 2/5 to see it. I’ll go two-fisted against him.
Shame, because I think the horse is special.”
My comment from earlier. Don’t mean to brag about this. Just something to repeat and learn from. Horses don’t win with quartercracks.
“Smart horses sometimes decide I’ve had enough.”
Very true.
This Belmont turned out to be possibly the most disappointing horse race I have ever seen, maybe because expectations were so high, maybe also because in a way it
fulfilled the eternal truth about the races, that there are just too many quirky and unpredictable factors that can come into play, even with an apparent superhorse-in-the-making like Big Brown. Here we have this next potential Secretariat hoping to break a three decade jinx, here we have the next overconfident trainer with a somewhat checkered past,just asking to be shot down, and it all gets resolved in the worst way possible: the superhorse finishing LAST, and the trainer, drenched in sweat, his back to everybody, unable to speak.
I knew something was up with this horse very early on:
a kind of physical affect I’ve never seen before from him: standard issue RANKNESS. He had the rail but the “cheap speed” Da’Tara goes and takes it from him and it’s as though Big Brown was immediately boxed in and necessarily restrained by Desormeaux. Then he gets taken around, wide, and still looks rank and almost like he’s start to “wheel”,
while the speed, as so often happens in the Belmont, dominates the pace and confounds everyone, and wins wire to wire , pretty much going away. With Casino Drive out of the race, it might have been a different pace scenario, a different result. Nothing broke well for BB today, not the heat, not the quarter crack, not the trip, but everything broke well for a lesser horse who got a dream trip and a dream ride and obviously , once he got the lead, ran the race of his life.
Well, I’m sorry you’re disappointed. I know the feeling.
I don’t know Dutrow, but I’d be willing to bet that he hated the idea of running this horse 3 times in five weeks, especially with the quarter.
Now, we’ll see if he makes the Travers. Could happen. Has something to prove.
I’m sure most good horsemen don’t like the idea of three highly stressful races against changing competition within 5 weeks, but consider how much attrition there was this year, and is most years, between horses that ran in the first, but not the second,the second but not the first, and the third, but not the first and second, like Da’Tara/ And it’s those fresh horses that come out of nowhere to have the best day of their lives, and thwart the would-be champion. So maybe the only equal playing field would be in the Triple Crown races themselves were governed by some different hard and fast rules, like : only X number of horses in the Derby can drop out and not race in the Preakness, only X number of horses in the Preakness can drop out and not race in the Belmont. But those rules make even less sense than the loose ones that govern the Triple Crown now. WHat is going on now is more like this: a heavyweight fight where the first five rounds are Ali vs. Frazier, then Frazier sits out the next five rounds, and it’s Ali vs. Liston, then Liston sits out the final five rounds and Ali tired after ten rounds against two formidable opponents , has to take on George Foreman. All the opponents are fresh facing him and he’s at a permanent disadvantage because of it. Having said that, yeah, I look forward to seeing this horse redeem himself and making his Belmont loss look like the fluke it probably was. Not our decision, but how many horses in the “modern period” go on to have a career spanning , say , 30 races, like Spectacular Bid, which include the three huge Triple Crown races? I expect there will more ink given to this issue in the next week or two, than we’ve ever seen before/
Having said all I just said, I just read for the first time this entire thread which dates from after the Preakness, with your ongoing insistence that the quarter crack could wind up meaning a lot, and shouldn’t be papered over. I never saw any of that ( I think the Belmont thread was a different thread that disappeared) , so I was not aware of your POV on this and how sure you were BB would fail. Wish I had read it before last night.
My super bets would have been different. As it turned out , ONE “favorite” —D. of COrk-—PLUS the three longest prices in the 9 horse field, made up the super, and it returned nearly 50 grand. So there was money to be made in this race, with BB out of it.
I don’t know that it was definitely the quartercrack, but it had to have an effect. Don’t care what the experts say.
He missed training. He was getting confused and frustrated because his routine was changed. He wanted to run but couldn’t. I don’t know how many times good horses have lost, then we hear they had quarters, but the trainers weren’t “worried” about it.
Oh well, couple nice races at Hollywood today. :-)
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