Boys and girls:

I've been in the horse ownership business for awhile and I've lost a few that had the same, if not as severe, fractures. I'm also in the medical field that treats athletes on a full time basis. Part of my job is to watch my injured college and professional athletes warm up prior to game time to make sure everything is a go before I give the decision to the coach that everything is OK.

Well guys...Saturday was not a go for Barbaro IMO. I did indeed watch him warmup closely and watched Prado's reactions to the many indications the horse was showing.

Go back and watch CLOSELY if you can the NBC tape of Barbaro/Prado walking with the pony horse prior to him being loaded. They cut to a commercial right AFTER the incident I'll describe.

He was walking right to left along the fence on the TV screen, where the pony rider makes a sharp left hand semi-circle turn to head back to the gate. As soon as Barbaro was almost to the 180 degree he shifts his weight to the right and Prado suddenly looks down to the right, then to the left, and then to the right again, obviously looking for something. He then sits upright and then 3 steps more Barbaro takes a short hop and stagger steps. Now Prado looks down again to check-right-left-and right again. See's and feels nothing and continues and then NBC cuts away.

I firmly believe that Brabaro caught an ankle or hit a small hole, spraining the ankle joint. Then when he busted the gate, he stretched the ligament more, and then 100 yards into the race, the ankle became unstable and dislocated 1st then fractured. This is the usual pattern of injuries. You need the ligament/tendon component to be intact to prevent dislocations.

I believe Barbaro did give subtle clues that he was amiss, but being taped front and rear, it gave him enough support to walk to the gate. If he did this PRIOR to the warmup jog, Prado would have known something was wrong. But, unfortunately, the sequence was reversed, he sprained AFTER the jog I believe. Imagine driving down the road at say 30-40 mph. Nice and smooth. All of a sudden you feel something under the car, and you suddenly look out your left mirror, rear mirror and right to see what you might have run over. Seeing nothing you continue to drive. But 15 seconds later you feel the same bump...you now for sure check all the mirrors and maybe pull over! Thats the reaction Prado gave while he checked, not once, but twice after Barbaro make those quirky moves 10-15 seconds apart.

Now, this is not only my feeling, but other owners who called in to the Capital OTB show Sunday morning. The technical crew did indeed get the NBC tape on the air this exact time as I discussed and they replayed it 3-4 times on air. The commentaors watched it intently and they agreed that something might have occured then.

We'll never know for sure...but I would not blame Prado. If you are baseball fans...go back 2 weeks ago with that Zambarano on the mound. He came into the game with a sore elbow (partial tear) that he only told Pedro Martinez about. He then continued to throw...felt a strain, told the trainer and manager he was OK...and threw ONE more pitch where he completely tore the ligament/tendon complex right off the bone and fragmented a small bony chip in the elbow.

And with all those small fractures and the dislocation ligament tear of the ligament/tendon complex...there's no way any MD/DVM can say for sure what came first, the sprain/dislocation or fracture to Barbaro.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/23/2006 03:30PM by SJU5.