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 News from Around the Americas | January 2007 
After 8 Months, Setback Ends Barbaro’s Battle
 Joe Drape - NYTimes
| | Barbaro after winning the Kentucky Derby. His injury elicited a wave of concern. (Ryan Donnell/NYTimes) |
Kennett Square, PA — In eight months of waiting for Barbaro’s shattered bones to heal, the horse’s owners and his veterinarian said they had not seen the Kentucky Derby-winning colt become so uncomfortable that he would refuse to lie down and rest. Until Sunday night.
So on Monday morning, the owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, and the veterinarian, Dr. Dean Richardson, decided enough was enough. At 10:30 a.m., Barbaro was euthanized, ending an extraordinary effort to save the life of a remarkable racehorse whose saga had gripped people around the world.
Many had watched in early May as Barbaro dispatched 19 opponents in the Kentucky Derby in dominating fashion, by a six and a half lengths. His résumé summoned memories of Affirmed, Seattle Slew and Secretariat, the last three winners of the Triple Crown. But two weeks after that triumph, on May 20, many more were horrified when Barbaro pulled up in the opening yards of the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. His fractured right hind leg dangled awkwardly while his jockey, Edgar Prado, tried to soothe him.
In recent weeks, Barbaro’s ailments had become overwhelming: complications with his left hind leg lingered, an abscess in his right hind heel was discovered last week and, finally, a new case of the painful and often fatal condition called laminitis developed in both of his front feet.
“That left him with not a good leg to stand on,” Dr. Richardson said Monday at an emotional news conference here at the George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals. “He was just a different horse. You could see he was upset. That was the difference. It was more than we wanted to put him through.”
The Jacksons were red-eyed as they explained that it had become clear their horse could not live without pain after a setback over the weekend that required a risky surgical procedure on his right hind leg. The couple had spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to save Barbaro’s life, and Ms. Jackson thanked the people who had expressed support for Barbaro through cards, letters, messages and even holy water.
“Grief is the pain we all pay for love,” she said.
Fifty feet away, in the hospital’s lobby, flowers and notes of condolences continued to arrive. The eight-month effort to nurse Barbaro back to health had riveted people around the world and had reminded casual fans about the beauty, mystery and heartbreak that is part of thoroughbred racing.
The day after his breakdown at the Preakness, Barbaro endured more than five hours of surgery as Dr. Richardson and his team used 27 screws to piece the right hind leg back together. In July, after laminitis had developed in Barbaro’s left rear hoof, Dr. Richardson proclaimed the chances for survival as poor. The condition is frequently caused by uneven weight distribution among a horse’s legs.
Despite having 80 percent of his hoof removed, Barbaro bounced back, and by mid-August, he was grazing outside the hospital here each day as Dr. Richardson fed him by hand.
The Jacksons visited the colt here each day and fed him grass from their farm in nearby West Grove, Pa. Before Christmas, they were encouraged enough by Barbaro’s recovery that they were making plans to move him to a farm in Kentucky, where he could roam the bluegrass and avoid the Northeast winter.
Earlier this month, however, veterinarians discovered that Barbaro’s left hind hoof was not growing back properly, and they had to remove some damaged tissue. Last week, the horse developed a deep bruise in his right heel, which Dr. Richardson tried to protect by performing a risky surgery Saturday. He tried to build a framework of metal pins, bars and a plate around the right hind leg to take all the weight off the fragile bone structure, which was already being held together with a matrix of screws.
By Sunday night, laminitis had begun to ravage Barbaro’s front legs, and the Jacksons decided there was little else left to do. Barbaro was in too much distress. When they and Dr. Richardson saw the colt struggling Sunday night in a sling designed to take pressure off his legs, they determined Barbaro had lost his will to live.
“We just reached a point where it was going to be difficult for him to go on without pain,” Mr. Jackson said. “It was the right decision. It was the right thing to do. We said all along if there was a situation where it would become more difficult for him, then it would be time.”
As news of Barbaro’s death became known early Monday, horsemen felt the loss deeply. Like Seattle Slew, Barbaro left Churchill Downs undefeated in six races. His victories were remarkable for their versatility: on grass, on dirt and at distances of a mile to a mile and a quarter.
The trainer Michael Matz, a former equestrian who won a silver medal in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, decided as soon as Barbaro arrived as a 2-year-old at his training center in Maryland that this was a preternaturally talented colt.
Mr. Matz aimed to make him the 12th Triple Crown champion, the first in 28 years, with an unorthodox approach. In six of the previous nine years, horses had captured the Derby and the Preakness only to fall short of the Triple Crown and immortality in the Belmont Stakes, the longest and most grueling of the three. Mr. Matz opted for a lighter-than-usual racing schedule for Barbaro, resting him for five to eight weeks between starts. He raced him only once in the 13 weeks before the Derby.
Mr. Matz and the Jacksons had even discussed returning Barbaro to the turf for a European campaign, perhaps culminating in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the most famous race in Europe.
Beyond Barbaro’s burgeoning talent, all of his human connections were beguiled by his personality, which blended intelligence with an old soul’s temperament, as one of Mr. Matz’s assistants, Peter Brette, said.
Gretchen Jackson, who with her husband had been breeding and racing thoroughbreds for more than 30 years, broke the golden rule of horse ownership: She fell in love with Barbaro.
So did much of the world. The gates of the hospital here have been adorned with signs proclaiming love for Barbaro and beseeching him to heal — “Grow Hoof Grow” — since his arrival. The fruit baskets filled with green apples and carrots, elaborate flower arrangements and get-well cards arrived by the truckload. Since early June, a Barbaro Fund has attracted more than $1.2 million in donations for the hospital, which is part of the New Bolton Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Online message boards were swamped with Barbaro news and for months became a virtual waiting room. On Monday, one of them, operated by Alex Brown, an exercise rider at the nearby Fair Hill Training Center, had its daily traffic nearly double to 15,000 visitors in a single hour.
“I love you Barbaro,” read one message posted by Cheryl — NY. “Everyone in my family is praying for you & lighting candles. Stay strong & don’t give up! XXOO.”
The Jacksons said they would remember most the good things that had come from Barbaro’s brief but brilliant life — from his Kentucky Derby victory to how he had raised the public’s awareness about everything from veterinary medicine to anti-slaughterhouse legislation.
“Our hope is that some of these issues don’t die,” Mr. Jackson said.
While the couple acknowledged that the decision to put Barbaro down was difficult, neither they nor Dr. Richardson expressed regrets. Even after months on end of being confined in a stall here in the intensive care unit, Barbaro had never been anything but calm and relaxed, Dr. Richardson said.
“The vast majority of the time he was a happy horse,” he said.
When that was no longer true Sunday night, all agreed on what had to be done.
Barbaro ate some grass for breakfast Monday morning. He was tranquilized and then a slight overdose of anesthetic was fed to him through a catheter that had already been fitted to him. “It could not have been more peaceful,” Dr. Richardson said. He fought back tears throughout the news conference.
When he was asked to make sense of the deep feelings Barbaro had summoned from complete strangers and from those who knew him best, Dr. Richardson perhaps wrote Barbaro’s epitaph:
“People love greatness,” he said. “People love the story of his bravery.” |
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