No one wants to see a racehorse break down. The most hardened trainers and the most avid fans seem to agree on this much: A horse has to win, but nobody wants to see one die trying.
Dr. Dean Richardson walking with Barbaro on Sunday following surgery.
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Ruffian, an undefeated filly who was fatally injured during a race in 1975.
For complicated reasons involving the anatomy and the physiology of thoroughbreds, a serious injury sustained at high speed too often spells death for a horse.
That such a breakdown is traumatic for the owner, the trainer, the jockey, the groom and the exercise rider is understandable. Most of them work closely with the horse day after day. What seems to mystify people is why strangers feel the same way.
Since Barbaro's injury early in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday, the reaction of strangers to his plight — an outpouring of concern and love — raises a question with no easy answer: Why do people care so much about the fate of an animal to which they have no personal connection?
Barbaro emerged from surgery last night, but his fate remained unknown. If he survives the immediate trauma, he will face months of recuperation and rehabilitation before he can be pronounced recovered.
The image of jockey Edgar Prado leaning into Barbaro's shoulder to help him stay upright was reminiscent of the photograph from 1975 showing Jacinto Vasquez leaning against his injured filly, Ruffian, and miraculously keeping her from going down on the track.
Ruffian was in the lead when she broke down in her famous match race against the Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure on July 6, 1975, at Belmont Park. She was so competitive that she kept running even though Vasquez, one of the strongest riders around, used every ounce of his muscle to pull her up as soon as he could.
Ruffian sustained a compound fracture of her right front leg. After enduring hours of complicated surgery, she reinjured her leg when she came out of the anesthesia and was euthanized early the next morning.
Horse racing is as competitive as any sport ever invented. Trainers use psychological tricks to try to outsmart the competition. Before the continuous monitoring of races, jockeys would poke, pull, kick and whip one another down the stretch in attempts to gain the lead.
But when their horses are hurt and have to be destroyed, it breaks their hearts.
In victory and defeat, and every day in between, horses remain wordless creatures. To those in the sport who spend their days caring for them, these thousand-pound thoroughbreds are like children — not in any sentimental sense, but in the sense that they cannot take care of themselves. They need people to provide them with water, food, shelter, exercise. The good ones are treated the way every child should be treated — with the mixture of care and discipline best suited for that particular individual.
No one who was involved with Ruffian's treatment expected her to survive. Not in any rational sense. They operated on her in the hope that they might buy time for a miracle to take place.
There seems to be social pressure against killing an animal, even when that may be the most humane path.
When we care about someone, or some animal, our first instinct is to reject the idea of death. Most people want to leave open at least a small window of opportunity for hope.
At the medical center where Barbaro was being treated, people left signs for the colt, expressing their love for him.
Perhaps the real miracle — the one that matters to all of us, whether we know it or not — is that so many of us are still capable of caring so much.
