Re: 6 Minutes prior to post in the Preakness... (786 Views)
Posted by:
alm (IP Logged)
Date: May 23, 2006 03:17PM
The fellows who are throwing around their respect for the vet and their disdain for us amateurs are the amateurs here.
Go on line and google condylar fractures in racehorses. You may learn something.
Jerry Brown is right on in his assessment. There is a chance there was NO evidence left of the pre-existing tissue or bone damage in this horse's ankle once most of the bones and tissue down there were crushed in the breakdown.
Let me repeat: a condylar fracture occurs AFTER considerable tissue damage has already occured. Barbaro was not likely to have suffered a condylar fracture during the race had he not had such damage beforehand.
The ONLY way to spot a condylar issue in advance is through a procedure called nuclear scintigriphy...a very expensive procedure that may or may not have been used on Barbaro. This is probably the procedure Jerry is referring to with his own horse, in which its back 'lit up' during the exam.
I am not guessing about this. I have bred and raced horses for 25 years and have been through my share of EVERY problem, especially this one. I have known more vets who were willing to medicate the pain than were willing to recommend spending thousands of dollars to pinpoint the problem.
To repeat: the fracture in Barbaro's condylar happened first. It was the loud noise Prado said he heard. Instantly the horse took a bad step on his next stride, feeling the pain, and came down crooked on his sesamoid and pastern. In the next several strides the pastern was nearly crushed.
This chain of events most likely did not start with a bad step. It started with a pre-existing condylar problem.
Sorry to disillusion anyone, but this is going on in horseracing EVERY day.