Posted on 05/25/2008 11:04:15 AM PDT by gate2wire
Big Brown, who will be seeking the coveted Triple Crown in the June 7 Belmont Stakes (gr. I), has a "slight" quarter crack on the inside of his left front foot, trainer Rick Dutrow said Sunday, May 25.
Dutrow said he noticed a small spot on the colt's foot Friday afternoon and notified hoof lameness specialist Ian McKinlay, who treated it. By Saturday, it had turned into a slight quarter crack, five-eighths of an inch long. McKinlay applied iodine solution and said he’s confident it is very minor. He will “lace it up,” and if everything is good, the colt will on the track for full training by Thursday.
"The horse is in no discomfort, he doesn’t even know anything is wrong," Dutrow said. "He is trying to figure out why he is not going to the track, and he has been tough to walk. Missing a few days of training is not going to hurt us at all. If I can work him on Tuesday before the Belmont, that would be perfect. Or even Wednesday would be good."
"This injury is nothing remotely close to the two foot injuries he had last fall and winter," McKinlay said. "Those were wall separations and were very tender. This is just a straight quarter crack that will pretty much heal by itself."
(Excerpt) Read more at tcm.bloodhorse.com ...
ping
“He flies.”
He’d better be able to fly now.
No Triple Crown this year.
Duct tape.
The most depressing part of it is that he’ll probably heal just enough to run in the Belmont, win, and then be promptly retired, to pass on cracking hoofs to all his offspring.
Bet his stud fee will be HUGE!!!!!!!!
I will enthusiastically bet against him now.
Really quite a shame. He is special.
His sire only ran 7 times. Wonder if he had the same issue.
“His sire only ran 7 times.”
Oops, make that eight times.
“Quarter cracks are caused by a variety of factors, including genetic predisposition, time of year, improperly trimmed feet, and traumatic injury.”
http://www.thoroughbredtimes.com/horse-health/1996/July/27/Healing-quarter-cracks.aspx
You’re welcome.
Pretty good article.
I’m tellin’ you guys, Big Brown is going to come up short just like Funnycide, Sunday Silence, and Smarty Jones did.
what a beautiful animal. I really wish him well!
As a dog breeder I assume that most things have some genetic component, either directly, or as a predisposition. Not sure about a cracked hoof, but it would be hard to imagine that this horse did not get the best possible hoof care. I wonder if it might not have something to do with weight, the makeup of the hoof, the and something about the way he runs putting more pressure on the hoof. But I’m just yaking, since I’m not any sort of experts on horse anatomy. Wish my father in law as still around, he raised, raised and conditioned thoroughbreds and quarterhorses for racing. I’d love to be able to get his take on all of this.
susie
And War Emblem.... he stumbled at the start of the Belmont... almost fell down... What a shame.
Is this really serious enough to keep Big Brown from running well? There’s no other horse this year that can hang with him.. none.
Wow...you really think he won’t triple? Maybe it will make the odds 2-5 rather than 1-5, but on the hoof, how much can it matter?
If I was his owner I wouldn’t race him until this was healed. Rather have another 2-3 good years of racing than risk a big problem because of a cracked hoof.
True, but let's see how he fares in the Belmont before putting him up there with the legendary Secretariat. I still say he'll lose in a close one.
His feet have consistently been his weakness. And they are a main reason he will, at most, race 3 more times before retiring to stud.
They never planned on racing him 2 or 3 years. This was always going to be his last year.
Don’t know exactly what it is, but these horses get quarter cracks, they don’t win.
Trainers say it’s OK, vets say it’s OK, owners say it’s OK...horses don’t win with quarter cracks.
Maybe this horse is good enough against a weak field, could happen...I’m not going to take 2/5 to see it. I’ll go two-fisted against him.
Shame, because I think the horse is special.
Agree. But they will be optimistic and insist this is no big deal. Must go for the TC.
The horse is already worth $70 million...but history is history.
It can matter a lot. The process of repair (nails, sowing it up, etc.) has to be carefully done, or it causes problems of its own, especially on thoroughbreds. It will for sure increase the odds against him from 1-5 to 4-3 or something like that.
“His feet have consistently been his weakness.”
Yes. Didn’t get on his bandwagon until a couple days before the Derby. Kept waiting for this kind of news. His figures were awesome, he was visually impressive, but there was a reason he was lightly raced.
He ran down in the Preakness and now this...
Think Sunday Silence was beat by a superior horse at a mile and a half. Smarty Jones also had distance limitations. Don’t remember who beat Funnycide: Empire Maker, Sarava? Anyway, Big Brown had a big shot at this, IMHO.
Now I can’t bet him.
Dude, it was a joke.
But I’m serious now, I forgot about your little obsessive compulsive horse thingy.
So I’m pinging the mod so maybe he can remove both our comments. Someday, maybe, you’ll be a better man for it.
But not today, obviously.
Oooooh....
I’m makin popcorn!
Darn.... sorry to hear about the quater crack. Big Brown is one great colt.
“Dude”, this is the third time you’ve insulted the way I make my living...kiss off.
Thanks to both of you for the responses.
I doubt it was the crack that made him choose not to run. He wanted to after he was jostled. He just did not want to when the jockey asked. It may be the heat or he got tired of being held when he wanted to run. Horse sometimes decide not to put forth the effort. Especially smart ones that are easily handled. His notorious calmness is not always an asset. Smart horses sometimes decide I’ve had enough.
Big Brown missed three days of training last week after the quarter crack was discovered. McKinlay inserted steel sutures to pull the crack together a week ago, allowing Big Brown to resume training.
LAST PLACE. 38 TO 1 WON!
“LAST PLACE. 38 TO 1 WON!”
$2220.00 double...woo hoo.
“Don’t know exactly what it is, but these horses get quarter cracks, they don’t win.
Trainers say it’s OK, vets say it’s OK, owners say it’s OK...horses don’t win with quarter cracks.
Maybe this horse is good enough against a weak field, could happen...I’m not going to take 2/5 to see it. I’ll go two-fisted against him.
Shame, because I think the horse is special.”
My comment from earlier. Don’t mean to brag about this. Just something to repeat and learn from. Horses don’t win with quartercracks.
“Smart horses sometimes decide I’ve had enough.”
Very true.
This Belmont turned out to be possibly the most disappointing horse race I have ever seen, maybe because expectations were so high, maybe also because in a way it
fulfilled the eternal truth about the races, that there are just too many quirky and unpredictable factors that can come into play, even with an apparent superhorse-in-the-making like Big Brown. Here we have this next potential Secretariat hoping to break a three decade jinx, here we have the next overconfident trainer with a somewhat checkered past,just asking to be shot down, and it all gets resolved in the worst way possible: the superhorse finishing LAST, and the trainer, drenched in sweat, his back to everybody, unable to speak.
I knew something was up with this horse very early on:
a kind of physical affect I’ve never seen before from him: standard issue RANKNESS. He had the rail but the “cheap speed” Da’Tara goes and takes it from him and it’s as though Big Brown was immediately boxed in and necessarily restrained by Desormeaux. Then he gets taken around, wide, and still looks rank and almost like he’s start to “wheel”,
while the speed, as so often happens in the Belmont, dominates the pace and confounds everyone, and wins wire to wire , pretty much going away. With Casino Drive out of the race, it might have been a different pace scenario, a different result. Nothing broke well for BB today, not the heat, not the quarter crack, not the trip, but everything broke well for a lesser horse who got a dream trip and a dream ride and obviously , once he got the lead, ran the race of his life.
Well, I’m sorry you’re disappointed. I know the feeling.
I don’t know Dutrow, but I’d be willing to bet that he hated the idea of running this horse 3 times in five weeks, especially with the quarter.
Now, we’ll see if he makes the Travers. Could happen. Has something to prove.
I’m sure most good horsemen don’t like the idea of three highly stressful races against changing competition within 5 weeks, but consider how much attrition there was this year, and is most years, between horses that ran in the first, but not the second,the second but not the first, and the third, but not the first and second, like Da’Tara/ And it’s those fresh horses that come out of nowhere to have the best day of their lives, and thwart the would-be champion. So maybe the only equal playing field would be in the Triple Crown races themselves were governed by some different hard and fast rules, like : only X number of horses in the Derby can drop out and not race in the Preakness, only X number of horses in the Preakness can drop out and not race in the Belmont. But those rules make even less sense than the loose ones that govern the Triple Crown now. WHat is going on now is more like this: a heavyweight fight where the first five rounds are Ali vs. Frazier, then Frazier sits out the next five rounds, and it’s Ali vs. Liston, then Liston sits out the final five rounds and Ali tired after ten rounds against two formidable opponents , has to take on George Foreman. All the opponents are fresh facing him and he’s at a permanent disadvantage because of it. Having said that, yeah, I look forward to seeing this horse redeem himself and making his Belmont loss look like the fluke it probably was. Not our decision, but how many horses in the “modern period” go on to have a career spanning , say , 30 races, like Spectacular Bid, which include the three huge Triple Crown races? I expect there will more ink given to this issue in the next week or two, than we’ve ever seen before/
Having said all I just said, I just read for the first time this entire thread which dates from after the Preakness, with your ongoing insistence that the quarter crack could wind up meaning a lot, and shouldn’t be papered over. I never saw any of that ( I think the Belmont thread was a different thread that disappeared) , so I was not aware of your POV on this and how sure you were BB would fail. Wish I had read it before last night.
My super bets would have been different. As it turned out , ONE “favorite” —D. of COrk-—PLUS the three longest prices in the 9 horse field, made up the super, and it returned nearly 50 grand. So there was money to be made in this race, with BB out of it.
I don’t know that it was definitely the quartercrack, but it had to have an effect. Don’t care what the experts say.
He missed training. He was getting confused and frustrated because his routine was changed. He wanted to run but couldn’t. I don’t know how many times good horses have lost, then we hear they had quarters, but the trainers weren’t “worried” about it.
Oh well, couple nice races at Hollywood today. :-)
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