I found a nice one this morning. Here she is, and here is an edited version of her tragic story.
by Kathleen Jones
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A crowd of over 50,000 assembled at Belmont Park on the 6th of July to witness what all felt would be a terrific and well-fought battle between champions.
Foolish Pleasure bounded from the gate with his head in front, but Ruffian quickly sprinted up from the inside and stuck her head in front. Despite bearing out and brushing with the colt five times in the opening stages, she increased her margin over Foolish Please to about a half length as the pair approached the turn. The crowd was cheering loudly as the match appeared to be meeting their greatest expectations. But as the pair, still linked side-by-side, approached the mile marker, there was a sound which both jockeys described later as being "like the breaking of a board", and the great match was over.
Ruffian was pulled up; her off-fore sesamoid bones were shattered. Baeza and Foolish Pleasure were suddenly alone, and the jockey eased the Derby winner to a canter to complete the course, as soon as he realized what had happened.
The once-cheering crowd now watched in stricken silence as the ambulance sped toward the filly and veterinarians attended to her. Heroic efforts were made to save Ruffian, although the early prognosis gave her only a 10% chance of survival. A pneumatic cast was applied before she was loaded onto the ambulance and another was applied in the barn area. A team of four vets and an orthopaedic surgeon laboured for a total of 12 hours to accomplish the impossible. During the operation, Ruffian was twice revived after she had stopped breathing. Finally the surgery was done.
However, the worst was yet to come. The anesthesia wore off and the filly awoke, disoriented, confused, and in pain. She thrashed about wildly despite the attempts of several attendants to hold her down. She fractured the new cast and caused even greater damage to the fetlock. Knowing that she could not endure further surgery, the veterinarians put her mercifully to sleep.
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Thus Ruffian and the pair which produced her were taken from us by an eerie and tragic set of circumstances. Although her career spanned only a shade over 13 months, and until that match she had only raced against her own gender, Ruffian is usually included in anyone's list of all-time great runners. She was not only unbeaten until her injury, she was also never headed in any race. She set a new stakes record in each of the eight stakes races which she won. She raced successfully from 5 1/2 furlongs to 1 1/2 miles with an average winning margin of 8 1/3 lengths.
Ruffian is buried near the flagpole at her home track of Belmont Park - the site of her first race where she blazed boldly onto the racing scene, and the site of her final race where a hundred thousand eyes watched her brilliant flame flicker out
