the way I’ve tuned out of television in recent years, I had not followed the tragedy of Barbaro, the runaway winner of the 2006 Kentucky Derby who in the opening moments of the Preakness two weeks later broke his leg in three places and had been struggling for his life ever since then. Finally, this past January 30, because of further complications, Barbaro was put to sleep by his owners.
A SAD FAREWELL
January 30, 2007—THE long vigil is over. The painful, meticulously loving struggle to save the life of the brilliant and gallant Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro has ended in heartbreak. The champ is dead.
After six months of guarded optimism leading an expectant world to believe he would pull through, Barbaro’s condition suddenly deteriorated when he developed a deep sub-solar abscess in the foot of his severely damaged right leg that required emergency surgery Saturday night. Less than two days later it was all over. He was euthanized yesterday morning at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center.
The bitter, crushing irony of his fate is that he died, not from the bone-cracking injuries to the right hind hoof suffered in his horrendous breakdown in the Preakness on May 20, but from complications from a disease, laminitis, that subsequently infected his perfectly sound left hind hoof and both front feet which, in turn, caused the recent abscess that struck the courageous colt last week.
It could be said of Barbaro that the operation was a success—his injured hoof was healing nicely—but the patient died. Thus ends the brief, meteoric career and promise of a racehorse that seemed destined for glory, if not immortality. Now, we will never know how good he really was. We are left only to guess what might have been.
Barbaro was a rare and special thoroughbred. The wider public knew him only for a couple of weeks leading up to the Preakness, but in that time he fired their imaginations and captured their interest as few horses ever have.
It’s hard to explain the ingredients in the Barbaro phenomenon. It wasn’t that he was undefeated or that he won the Derby in dashing style—we could all name a dozen Derby winner heroes.
There was something about Barbaro that horsemen and the public recognized early. For want of a better word, I call it magic. He had about him an aura. Some people have it. A few horses have it. You can’t define it or describe it, but you know it when you see it.
Barbaro pulled into Churchill Downs at the end of April to contest the Kentucky Derby with an unblemished racing record, always a big attention-grabber in the racing business. He had won all of his five starts, the last a hard-fought victory in the Florida Derby.
A good record, but not earth-shattering. Around the barns in the days leading up to the Derby, Barbaro suddenly emerged as the star of the show. People spoke of him in hushed tones. Here, they dared to suggest, was a Triple Crown winner. We all got the message. On Derby eve, I described him as a colt “of such soaring potential, he could be the new Seattle Slew.”
Barbaro did not win the Derby. He blitzed it, thundering to the wire so far ahead of the field with such a flourish that the spectacle seemed surreal. He was simply sensational. Overnight, he was the talk of the world.
My most vivid memory of Barbaro was not at the Derby, but a few days before the Preakness. We had all gone to Fair Hill in Maryland, where he was being trained by Michael Matz, to see him gallop around the wood-chip track.
Matz then turned him out in a circular grass pen near the barn. Barbaro promptly dropped to the ground, rolled over on his back, and kicked his legs in the air, luxuriating in the sheer joy of the exercise. He reminded me of a little boy paddling and splashing at the beach.
Who could have believed that within a matter of hours, this same Barbaro would be fighting for his life, the bones of his right hind hoof shattered in three places, after galloping less than a furlong out of the starting gate in the Preakness?
The memory of that day, even now, is almost too stressful to contemplate. The sight of Barbaro flailing in his torment, the rush of trackmen to his side, jockey Edgar Prado embracing a stranger in his distress, the horse ambulance, the siren-blasting dash to the veterinary hospital in Pennsylvania, the medical bulletins, but most of all, the hope, the fervent hope that somehow Barbaro would beat the odds.
It was not to be. Even as his crumbled right leg healed beautifully during his early recovery and before his latest setback over the weekend, he contracted the deadly laminitis in his good left hoof. Dr. Dean Richardson, chief of surgery at the New Bolton Center, had no choice but to put him down.
Life’s a mystery. Barbaro’s trainer, Michael Matz, and his wife, Dorothy, were involved in a horrendous air crash in Iowa in 1989, when 112 passengers perished. The Matzes rescued three children from the smoking inferno and walked away with hardly a scratch.
But Barbaro took just one bad step on the racetrack and paid for it with his life. Leave it to the philosophers to explain. All we know is that Barbaro was a distinguished horse in every way—in breeding, talent, performance, demeanor. He was calm in surgery, patient under adversity, gallant in the fight for his life.
His passing has made the racing world a very sad place.
I happened to come upon this column a couple of weeks ago and it struck me as well written and touching piece about a great horse and the catastrophe that suddenly struck it down from the heights to the depths. Kerrison’s description of how how special Barbaro was had a feel of truth. I had no idea the piece would be offensive to anyone. But see these readers’ comments:
Ted V. writes:
Eddie C. wrote:
Deborah A. writes: