Barbaro

Barbaro (USA) 2003 Dark Bay or Brown Colt   Dynaformer (USA) x La Ville Rouge (USA), by Carson City (USA)

When Ruffian was cut down in her prime by a fatal injury, Americans grieved for a magnificent racehorse who was mourned as much for what might have been as for what she had already accomplished. Since her passing, no horse has embodied so much of both the ecstasy and the agony of horse racing as Barbaro, who like Ruffian died too soon after a career that had captured the nation’s imagination.

Foaled at Sanborn Chase Farm on April 29, 2003, the son of Dynaformer and the Carson City mare La Ville Rouge was a marked colt almost from birth. Unusually large as a foal, he also proved intelligent, coordinated, competitive, and fond of human attention. The latter trait showed strongly when the colt injured a leg in a paddock accident as a yearling; confined to a stall to let the leg rest and heal, Barbaro spent his days watching people and angling for a petting from everyone who walked by.

Barbaro – who was named for a foxhound in a 19^th-century painting belonging to owner-breeders Roy and Gretchen Jackson – recovered uneventfully and was in due course sent to the Ocala farm of John and Jill Stephens for breaking. The Stephens quickly realized they had an exceptional prospect on their hands, an opinion soon echoed by trainer Michael Matz after the colt was sent on to his barn.

A former Olympic equestrian team rider, Matz has a well-earned reputation as a consummate horseman. Working with assistant trainer Peter Brette, a former jockey who became Barbaro’s regular exercise rider, Matz brought the colt along patiently. The big bay (he was registered as a dark bay or brown but developed a lighter bay coat as he matured) did not make his first start until October 4, when he demolished a one-mile maiden turf race at Delaware Park by eight and one-half lengths – and this despite causing so much disruption at the gate that he was very nearly scratched.

Off that devastating victory, Barbaro went into the November 19 Laurel Futurity as the 5-2 second choice. He had no trouble with either the extra sixteenth of a mile or with his twelve rivals, galloping away with the race by eight lengths under Jose Caraballo. Although he was glancing around and not really focused on his work as he cruised home, the time over firm turf was a brisk 1:40.17.

Matz knew by this time that he had an exceptional colt on his hands. He also knew that La Ville Rouge had been graded stakes-placed on both dirt and turf and that Dynaformer, though a notable sire of turf runners, had himself been a Grade II winner on dirt. Given that background, the temptation to see if Barbaro could carry his form on turf over to the main track was strong. For Barbaro’s next start, however, Matz kept the colt on the grass. Sent after the Tropical Park Derby (gr. IIIT) on New Year’s Day, Barbaro romped home by three and three-quarters lengths. Although Edgar Prado was wrapping up on him as he neared the finish, Barbaro still zipped the final furlong of the nine-furlong test in a blazing 11.26 seconds, finishing the race in 1:46.65.

By this time, it was obvious that if Barbaro stayed on the grass, the Jacksons had the makings of a turf champion. But other dreams were stirring, and the decision was made to go ahead and try the colt on the dirt. The selected target was the Holy Bull Stakes (gr. III), a nine-furlong race at Gulfstream Park on February 4.

Although Barbaro kept his undefeated streak intact, opinions were mixed after the race. The track had come up sloppy, leaving the question of how Barbaro would handle a fast surface unanswered. Further, the relatively undistinguished Great Point had been cutting into his margin at the end, reducing a three-length lead at the eighth pole to three-quarters of a length at the wire.

Matz was not fully convinced that Barbaro really cared for the dirt, but he was not overly concerned either. Barbaro had done what was asked of him, and Edgar Prado confirmed what Matz already suspected, that Barbaro had not really been pushed through the final furlong. Accordingly, Matz made plans to enter the colt in either the Fountain of Youth Stakes (gr. II) on March 4 or the Florida Derby (gr. I) on April 1, figuring that a dry track and stronger competition would show him what he really had.

Barbaro was not in the gate for the Fountain of Youth, which was won by First Samurai on the disqualification of Corinthian for swerving back and forth in the stretch. When he answered the call to the post for the Florida Derby, he had been idle for eight weeks, a gap that had many observers asking questions.

Even more questions were being asked after the race. With the exception of Sharp Humor, who had won the Swale Stakes (gr. II) on the Fountain of Youth undercard, the field was a weak one; many horsemen with serious Kentucky Derby hopefuls had opted to go elsewhere thanks to the five-week gap between the Florida Derby and the Kentucky Derby. According to conventional wisdom, five weeks was too long to go without a race before the Kentucky Derby, yet was too short to get another prep race in before the big event. And though Barbaro won, the doubters were out in force within minutes of the winner’s circle ceremony. Barbaro’s margin was only half a length over Sharp Humor, who had stayed with him all through the stretch run, and his high, bounding gait seemed much better suited to the turf.

Prado concurred that the colt was probably better on the grass, but he was far more optimistic regarding Barbaro’s Kentucky Derby chances than the casual observers. He was convinced the big bay had simply been loafing down the stretch and was nowhere near all out at the end. Matz agreed. His whole goal had been to have Barbaro gain experience on the dirt on a timetable that would produce a fresh horse for the Kentucky Derby, and he felt that he had accomplished his goal. Now he began preparing the colt for the Derby with a blithe disregard for the nay-sayers.

By the time Barbaro arrived at Churchill Downs from Keeneland, where he had been training over the new Polytrack surface, he was visually bigger and more physically impressive than he had been in Florida. His coat gleaming and dappled, he was full of himself and training aggressively. After the colt showed that he was fit and eager to go with a four-furlong blowout in 46 seconds on the Saturday before the Derby, Matz elected to gallop him up to the big race, feeling that the colt was as sharp as he could be and needed only to be kept fit to turn in the race of his young life.

Matz was dead right, and so were the bettors whose money made the colt the second choice in the race at 6-1 after 5-1 favorite Sweetnorthernsaint. Although Barbaro stumbled at the start of the Derby, he recovered quickly and raced under light restraint behind the early speed. As the pacemakers faltered heading towards the final turn, Barbaro began picking up horses on his own steam and sailed into the lead with about five-sixteenths of a mile to go. Bounding powerfully along, his driving hindquarters literally hurling his forehand up and forward, the big colt surged further ahead of his hapless rivals with every stride and crossed the wire six and one-half lengths ahead of Bluegrass Cat, the greatest winning margin seen in the Run for the Roses since Assault’s eight-length score in 1946. Barbaro had run his final quarter in a swift :24.34, the best closing quarter since Secretariat in 1973, and had, in the words of the race chart, been “much the best.”

Barbaro came out of the Derby well, enthusiastically cleaning up his feed tub. Rather than go directly to Pimlico for the Preakness, Matz elected to take the colt to the Fair Hill Training Center in Elkton, Maryland. There, away from the worst of the media circus, Barbaro was able to enjoy a relatively relaxed training routine in the days leading up to the Preakness. Matz, knowing that the colt was already sharp and fit, elected not to give Barbaro any more fast works between the Derby and the Preakness. His goal now was to keep Barbaro relaxed and healthy without overtraining him.

In the aftermath of the Preakness, many people claimed that Barbaro had not looked as good as he had before the Derby; some even claimed that they had heard rumors that the colt was sore or had pulled up lame from a workout. Human memory, however, is notorious for its ability to reshape itself in the light of past events, and there is no evidence from prior to the Preakness that Barbaro’s closest connections were anything less than completely confident that the colt would be ready to turn in another big effort on Preakness Day.

The colt himself was completely professional when the time came for the walk from his stall to the Preakness saddling area, but once there, he became increasingly keyed up. He was full of himself and nearly unseated Edgar Prado during the pre-race warmup, throwing a couple of little bucks into his stride. Just how keyed up he was became apparent just a split-second after the outside horse, Diabolical, was loaded into the starting gate. To a collective gasp from the crowd, the Derby winner broke through the starting gate and began sprinting down the track. Fortunately, the lack of company appeared to disconcert the colt, who pricked his ears and began looking around, and he was quickly pulled up.

After a quick inspection by track veterinarian David Zipf – a standard precaution -- Barbaro was loaded back into the gate, and a few second later the field was sent away. But within a hundred yards, Barbaro began veering sharply to the right with Prado standing in the stirrups, slowing the colt with all his strength. The reason why became apparent as a horrified silence gripped the stands; the colt’s right hind leg dotted down, then jerked up in an ominous staccato pattern as Barbaro continued to run mostly on three legs. In a feat of superior horsemanship, Prado managed to get him pulled up in the minimum possible distance while keeping as much of his own weight as possible off the damaged hind end. The colt came to a stop just past the finish line, and Prado immediately hopped off, doing his best to calm Barbaro and keep him from moving around.

Almost unnoticed by the crowd, the lightly raced Bernardini streaked past the stricken Derby winner in an impressive Preakness triumph that would later fuel speculation as to what might have been had Barbaro’s misstep not occurred. At the time, it did not matter. The crowd’s attention was focused not on the horses streaming along the rail to pass the Preakness wire but at midtrack, where Matz, Prado, and the track veterinarian were working to keep Barbaro still enough to get a splint onto the injured leg. Fans broke into tears as a blue screen was set up between the colt and the grandstand, believing that the horse was about to be euthanized on the spot. But a few minutes later, the screen came down and applause swelled from the grandstand as Barbaro hobbled onto the waiting horse ambulance for the short ride back to his stall.

Members of the media hovered outside Barbaro’s stall, kept at bay by a hastily erected tape barrier and track security, while inside attempts were made to get X-rays of the injury. According to Dr. Larry Bramlage, the on-call veterinarian from the American Association of Equine Practitioners, the colt’s initial injury had probably been a condylar fracture of the hind cannon bone just above the ankle. Because the colt had still been in the all-out charge following the start when the injury occurred, however, Prado’s best efforts had not been enough to keep Barbaro from compounding the injury with further fractures above and below the ankle before he could be brought to a stop. The result was what some veterinarians term an “ice bag” fracture: from the lower cannon down, the leg had become a jumble of over twenty pieces of bone. Further, the ankle had been dislocated.

Barbaro’s only hope was surgery, and to that end he was transported to the New Bolton Center at the University of Pennsylvania, some eighty miles from Pimlico, with an escort of state troopers clearing the way for his van and keeping the curious back. Once safely at New Bolton’s George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals, he was given intravenous antibiotics, pain medications, and liquids to prepare him for surgery the following day.

In a nearly six-hour procedure, a surgical team headed by Dr. Dean Richardson used a locking compression plate, some twenty-three screws, and bone grafts to stabilize the fractures. The idea was to encourage fusion of the fetlock joint, which would limit Barbaro’s future mobility but would maximize stability in the leg. A heavy cast was then applied to the colt’s leg from above the hock to the hoof.

Tension surrounded the colt’s recovery from anesthesia; many industry professionals and fans alike both remembered all too well that it was while coming out of anesthesia that Ruffian had panicked and kicked her cast to bits, forcing her own humane destruction. Unlike Ruffian, however, Barbaro was placed not in a padded stall but in a special sling – really more of a raft with long sleeves for each leg to ride in – that suspended him within a tank of warm water; even if he struggled, he would meet only with the resistance of the water itself, an advance that had proven very useful with other horses being treated for leg fractures. And Barbaro proved an ideal patient. Not only did he come out of anesthesia with very little fuss, but when blindfolded, lifted out, and freed from the sling and the blindfold, he all but jogged back to his stall and was soon happily munching his first post-operative meal.

The surgery was the beginning of an eight-month odyssey through hope and fear for Barbaro’s human “family” and support team. As Dr. Richardson explained to the media in the first of many press conferences, the surgery was only the first step on a long road to recovery, and he estimated the colt’s long-term chances at no better than 50-50. There were simply too many things that could possibly go wrong, he said, to be more optimistic than that in such a complex case.

How right he was.

At first, however, all went well. Within 24 hours of surgery, Barbaro was eating well and nickering at mares as they passed in and out of the clinic. Although the general public was not admitted, the colt soon had visitors of the two-legged kind as well. The Jacksons, of course, came to see their beloved colt regularly, and on May 30, Edgar Prado was able to come and see how Barbaro was faring. Cards and letters flowed in, along with a stream of donations to the New Bolton Center, and on June 8, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell came by to see Barbaro and to present a check for $13.5 million dollars, earmarked for new medical facilities.

The primary concern after Barbaro had survived the initial surgery was that he might develop laminitis – an inflammation of the sensitive layers under the horny surface of the hoof – in his left hind foot. This is always a possible complication of major leg surgery in horses, as the animal tends to shift too much of its weight to the foot opposite the damaged limb. Eventually, if the excess pressure is not relieved, laminitis may result. While a sling can be use to help relieve the stress, too much time spent in a sling can adversely affect the horse’s digestive system, which is designed to work with a healthy horse’s tendency to move about constantly during its waking hours. Without that movement, constipation and colic can become problems. Further, many horses simply do not tolerate a sling well for long periods and will fight it rather than relaxing into it.

To attempt to prevent laminitis from developing in the healthy left hind foot, a special shoe was applied to that foot to support the sole and build the leg length up to be equal to the casted right leg. Barbaro also made some use of a sling, although the periods he spent in it soon became shorter and shorter. All appeared to be going well, and Barbaro sailed through his first cast change on June 13. The initial incision had healed nicely, and X-rays reveals that bone grafts placed around the ankle joint to help it fuse into a weight-bearing unit were growing well.

As Dr. Richardson had already pointed out, it would have taken a miracle for Barbaro not to encounter any setbacks during his convalescence, and on July 3, the first signs of trouble appeared in the form of a slight fever and apparent discomfort in the hind legs. Over the next week, Barbaro had two bent screws removed from his ankle; had an infection cleaned out of the ankle joint, necessitating replacement of the locking plate at the pastern and the screws that went with it; had a small abscess on the sole of his left hind foot treated; and went through five cast changes.

By July 11, things were beginning to look back up, but on July 12, Barbaro’s postoperative course took an ominous turn for the worse. Severe laminitis had developed in the left hind foot, and the only thing Dr. Richardson could do to try to give Barbaro a chance for survival was to cut away some 80% of the damaged hoof. A special fiberglass cast was applied to protect the foot, but Dr. Richardson openly admitted during the following press conference that the colt’s prognosis was grim.

Once again, Barbaro defied the odds. He remained able to sleep comfortably, to eat well, and to stand for prolonged periods without a sling. By August 3, the laminitic foot was showing signs of slow hoof regrowth, and the shattered right leg continued to knit without a hitch; in fact, by October, the primary reason he remained in a cast on the right leg was to keep him from placing too much pressure on that foot in an effort to shift weight off the damaged left hind. By November 6, Barbaro was able to graduate from the right leg cast to a padded bandage with splints, and by mid-November, Barbaro was able to go out for short walks and a chance to graze – though always on a lead and under careful supervision.

Through December, Barbaro did so well that talk began circulating to the effect that he might be able to move from the New Bolton Center to a Kentucky farm where he could live a more normal existence while still being carefully managed for his orthopedic problems. But on January 9, 2007, Barbaro began showing signs of discomfort in his left hind foot. Removal of the cast on that foot revealed some new separation of the medial portion of the hoof wall, and on January 10, Barbaro underwent another surgery to remove the damaged tissue.

Despite the setback, Dr. Richardson was guardedly optimistic. Barbaro had already overcome far more than anyone would have believed back in May, and the veterinarian felt there was more healthy tissue in the bad left foot than there had been six months earlier. A few days later, more of the damaged hoof wall was removed, and a new cast was placed on Barbaro’s right hind leg to help support his weight.

Barbaro still had a chance, but his life now depended on no further complications arising. A procedure on January 24 which involved replacing the cast on his left hind foot and the application of a special brace on his right hind foot went well, but on January 27, an abscess was found in the sole of the right hind foot. The only solution was a risky operation in pins were passed through Barbaro’s cannon bone to support an external brace and eliminate all weight bearing on the right foot, a procedure which Dr. Richardson acknowledged might result in a fracture of the cannon bone itself.

The colt seemed to tolerate the operation well enough, but on January 28, his condition declined further. His front feet were now beginning to show signs of laminitis, and for the first time, the colt was unable to rest comfortably during the night. He was beginning to show signs of distress, and Richardson had to tell the Jacksons that he could no longer reliably control the colt’s pain.

On January 29, 2007, Barbaro was given a tranquilizer and was allowed to eat some grass, and his human connections came in to say goodbye. Then a fatal dose of a sedative was administered, and within a minute, Barbaro was gone.

Barbaro will never have the chance to stand at stud and pass on his genetic heritage of strength, speed, and heart. But his valiant struggle for life has left a legacy of its own. During his stay at the New Bolton Center, over $1.2 million in donations were received, money that will go to buying new medical equipment. The Jackons generously donated $3 million to the University of Pennsylvania to endow a chair of veterinary medicine in equine disease research in Dr. Richardson’s honor. The National Thoroughbred Racing Association announced the creation of the Barbaro Memorial Fund, a charity which will fund research into equine laminitis. Gulfstream Park announced that it will establish a “Barbaro Foundation” to provide scholarships for veterinary medicine students. And various charities dedicated to helping retired racehorses find either new careers or honorable pensioning reported an upsurge in donations following Barbaro’s death.

Barbaro is gone, but his memory lives. And thanks to that memory, other horses may have a better chance at life.

Text © 2007 by Avalyn Hunter

Artwork © 2006 by Pat DeLong. Used by permission and may not be copied or distributed in any form without the express permission of Pat DeLong. For information regarding purchases, reproductions, or licensing, please contact Pat DeLong at patdelongart@aol.com.