barbaro,the MD vets, and my money

[shanahan]

Thoughts while praying this brave animal can be saved:

1.  can anyone tell me - and leave out the NBC $ BS - why this horse was not examined like any $5K claimer would have been after breaking through the gate?

2.  MD racing will suffer for this - greatly.  It\'s all about the $$ to save it up there - this weekend IS MD racing - and I don\'t want this to be a \"grassy knoll\" deal, but ....come on.  Happenstance?  The fav gate opens - he\'s the only one?...and it\'s the KY derby winner?  coincidence, of course.

Matz story, DAn Hendricks story....god, let this one end well.  There is too much class involved.

[P-Dub]

Shanahan,

It looked like Barbaro pushed it open himself.

And yes, he should have been examined.

I\'m praying for Barbaro, but it sure looks like it won\'t end well.

[BitPlayer]

The gate incident and a bunch of other things were discussed on TVG after the race yesterday.  Both Frank Lyons and Simon Bray said that if anything was amiss after Barbaro broke through the gate, Prado would have noticed it when he jogged the horse back to the gate.  Jogging the horse is a more reliable way of detecting a problem than having a vet take a perfunctory peek.

They also played the clip of Prado looking back at the horse\'s hind end while the horse was being walked to the gate.  Again, Lyons and Bray agreed that if Prado was really concerned, he would have asked the outrider to jog the horse.  They speculated that, among other possibilities, Prado might have been looking to see if a fly was bothering the horse.

This whole process of waiting for news and fearing the worst brings back powerful memories of Ruffian.

[imallin]

All hell breaks loose if Barbaro is scratched. Pimlico loses millions and millions of betting pool money, america is denied a triple crown shot and the vet comes under intense PERSONAL scrutiny.

Imagine if you were the vet who scracthed Barbaro and it comes out that nothing is wrong with him....you have firebombs thrown thru your windows at your home. You probably get fired because you cost Maryland millions of dollars of revenue.

I\'m not sure how a vet can look at a horse and determine if he\'s ok or not to run unless the injury is so obvious that anyone can see it. There\'s no time to get out a machine and do an MRI on the horse to see if its all ok. You can just go on what you see and if the horse is standing and bouncing around you just assume he\'s ok.

[shanahan]

imallin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> All hell breaks loose if Barbaro is scratched.
> Pimlico loses millions and millions of betting
> pool money, america is denied a triple crown shot
> and the vet comes under intense PERSONAL
> scrutiny.
>
> Imagine if you were the vet who scracthed Barbaro
> and it comes out that nothing is wrong with
> him....you have firebombs thrown thru your windows
> at your home. You probably get fired because you
> cost Maryland millions of dollars of revenue.
>
> I\'m not sure how a vet can look at a horse and
> determine if he\'s ok or not to run unless the
> injury is so obvious that anyone can see it.
> There\'s no time to get out a machine and do an MRI
> on the horse to see if its all ok. You can just go
> on what you see and if the horse is standing and

yes, paragraph 2 is the risk, of course...I\'d take it - and I am NOT redboarding...if this race was as KNLD, would he be scratched?  something to ponder.
> bouncing around you just assume he\'s ok.

[imallin]

You know, hindsight is 20 20. Put yourself in the guys shoes....Barbaro is bouncing and feeling good and looking ok and there are millions of eyes on YOU. EVERYONE wants the horse to run. No one is thinking there\'s anything wrong with him and we\'ll never know if the 2 incidents are related in any way. It looks like the gate incident was a factor in the ankle injury, but we\'ll never know for sure.

Think of how you\'d be the ultimate \'bad guy\' by scratching barbaro. Vets are just there to relay information from what the jock tells him. If a veteran like prado says, \"boss, he\'s ok\" you are going to let the horse run.

[Boscar Obarra]

  The breakthough really did look benign , the horse was quite composed.

  I imagine the vet should have examined the horse, but did not want the entire field to stand in the gate an extra minute.

  Doubtful he would have found any cause to scratch.

[BitPlayer]

According to the post-surgery piece by Joe Drape in the NY Times, Barbaro was examined by a track vet after breaking through the starting gate:

\"Veterinarians have ruled out that the injury occurred when Barbaro broke through the starting gate before the race. A track veterinarian checked him before he was reloaded, and replays of the race showed that Barbaro broke cleanly and was running smoothly for about a hundred yards.\"

[asfufh]

Per Bitplayers message:
\"According to the post-surgery piece by Joe Drape in the NY Times, Barbaro was examined by a track vet after breaking through the starting gate\"

I\'d feel a lot better if I saw a video of the Track Vet checking out Barbaro after he broke through the gate. One must exist....anybody see it? Asfufh

[shanahan]

asfufh Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Per Bitplayers message:
> \"According to the post-surgery piece by Joe Drape
> in the NY Times, Barbaro was examined by a track
> vet after breaking through the starting gate\"
>
> I\'d feel a lot better if I saw a video of the
> Track Vet checking out Barbaro after he broke
> through the gate. One must exist....anybody see
> it? Asfufh


I have not seen it either - reason for my initial post, plus it was a hot topic yesterday on both Jason Levin and Felix Trvino shows...hard to believe we ALL missed it.  I don\'t buy it - it happened too fast.  

[BitPlayer]

Here\'s a story from Bloodhorse quoting the state vet about what he did:

http://tcm.bloodhorse.com/viewstory.asp?id=33670

I don\'t know if you can verify it from the NBC footage or not.

[imallin]

I never saw the vet \'check the horse out\'. Did he look from a distance? If there was a vet bending down below Barbaro\'s leg, touching it and looking at it, no one saw it.

i think they are just trying to cover their asses.