If I understood Dr Bramlage correctly, Smarty did not suffer any injury, & there is an excellent chance he would have come back better & stronger after a 3 month or so break in training. The problem is the length of the break would have caused him to miss an entire breeding season which, if you multiple the $100k rumored stud fee times the 110 limit imposed by the Chapmans, represents $11 million in potential lost gross revenue.

That's a considerable amt for the Chapmans, who retained half of the breeding rts, to put at risk, but I nonetheless think that as much as anything, it was the cost & availability(or lack thereof)of insurance which drove the decision. Using the reported syndication value of $39 million & today's rates for racehorses, the Chapmans would themselves have had to come up with a little less than $2 million for mortality insurance, assuming they could get full coverage, which is very doubtful. 1st yr stallion coverage, which also protects against infetility, will probably be a little less than double that, but the Chapmans will only have to pay half of the bill, which will come at the same time they are receiving $19.5 million as a result of the syndication. Amazingly, I am led to believe that sufficient post-syndication underwriting capacity has been assembled to cover the entire $39 million, so the very real possibility that a much lesser amt of coverage would be available a yr from now also had to be taken into consideration.

These are the factors that caused me in an earlier post to question the Chapman's advisor when he very publicly insisted that any deal include the right to race Smarty as a 4 yr old, something I'm guessing the very astute owner of 3 Chimneys agreed to because he calculated the liklihood of that actually happening as pretty close to zero.

It's also why I view the "we're doing this for the good of the horse" comments as nothing more or less than a rationalization which, given human nature, the Chapmans are now completely convinced is the case.