TRIPLE CROWN DREAM DIES
Injury forces surprise retirement on eve of Belmont Stakes
It was supposed to be a moment of glory for I’ll Have Another, the Canadian-owned horse that was poised to win the first Triple Crown since 1978. But a diagnosis of tendinitis forced handlers to make a wrenching decision,
ELMONT, N.Y.— A cheap horse, an untested jockey, a trainer hounded by doping infractions and a Canadian owner with a thing for cookies.
Hardly a classic team to mint sporting legend. But against long odds — including real ones on race track tote boards — this unlikely crew was poised on Saturday to clinch the first Triple Crown sweep since 1978.
Oh, what might have been.
Instead of the giddy anticipation of unfolding history, century-old Belmont Park was steeped in a funereal sense of loss on Friday. The main character in what should have been a glorious day at the races instead limped off centre stage.
I’ll Have Another was the people’s horse, a $35,000 bargain basement animal twice auctioned off before he turned three. He was 21⁄ minutes from
2 thoroughbred racing immortality, a lightning bolt of good news for an industry weighed down by corruption allegations, drug scandals and physical breakdowns of the very horses bred for the business.
“I’m afraid history is going to have to wait for another day,” said an emotional J. Paul Reddam, the Windsor, Ont. owner who announced I’ll Have Another’s retirement Friday.
The stunning withdrawal turned the Belmont Stakes from a must-watch event guaranteed to pull in nonracing fans to one they will now ignore. More than 100,000 fans had been expected to jam Belmont Park to watch I’ll Have Another. Locals say they’ll be lucky to attract half that. A win would have made him a superstar with movies, apps, Tshirts.
Instead I’ll Have Another will be a historical footnote.
“It’s devastating,” said Dale Romans, the trainer for the new Belmont Stakes favourite, Dullahan. “This was going to be a special race, one of the biggest races of our time.”
The chestnut horse, who started from outside gates to win the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, was attempting to become only the12th Triple Crown champion in 144 years.
It is one of the rarest feats on the athletic landscape, like baseball’s own Triple Crown, a tennis Grand Slam or back-to-back World Cup soccer titles.
“It hasn’t been done in 34 years. It’s not easy,” says Canadian jockey Ron Turcotte, who collected all three crown jewels on spectacular, record-crushing Secretariat in1973. “Every three-year-old has a shot. But they only have one shot.”
I’ll Have Another’s shot died Friday when a ropelike tendon running down the back of his front left leg became inflamed.
BRED FOR SPEED
In horse racing, bigger isn’t necessarily better.
“The interesting thing is bigger animals don’t run faster. In fact, the fastest animals are relatively small,” said Alan Wilson, a locomotion expert at the Royal Veterinary College, University of London. He noted the swiftest land animal is the cheetah, weighing only about 40 to 50 kilograms.
“As you get bigger, you start getting challenges to make your legs strong enough. It gets harder to fold your leg up and swing it forward rapidly. So being very, very big, being at the extreme end, isn’t necessarily a benefit for running.”
I’ll Have Another is an average size horse, a little under 16 hands. But a key factor in determining speed is how efficiently horses cycle their legs through each galloping stride. I’ll Have Another was exceptional at that.
In full gallop, a horse’s leg is off the ground for about 80 per cent of the stride. Each hoof is on the ground for less than a 10th of a second “so you get a very rapid, almost like a drum roll of four-foot contact with the ground, one right after the oth- er,” said Wilson.
At speed, I’ll Have Another would be transferring his 500 kilograms down his legs during a race to the coffin bone in his foot, which is surrounded by sheets of tissue. The force of that load is dampened by the coffin bone and tissue, which outwardly distribute the force around the foot, flexing for shock absorption.
Tendons also help ease the load, stretching when the hoof is planted and springing back when the hoof leaves the ground.
“He’s like a sports car that keeps switching gears,” said jockey Mario Gutierrez before the injury was announced.
“He keeps pushing forward. He never gives up. He has the biggest heart ever. He’s a fighter, like likes to be a winning horse. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to do the things he does.”
At some point, that left front tendon couldn’t keep up with that big heart. The horse with the common touch developed a most common injury for horses: tendinitis.
Triple Crown contenders must run three races of three different lengths in three different cities on dirt tracks — none of them identical — within a short five weeks. It is a gruelling physical test for threeyear-old horses.
The Belmont is the toughest. It’s a 11⁄ 2- mile oval called “Big Sandy,” padded with a 12-centimetre loam and sand base and distinguished by its wide sweeping turns.
Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas has brought 21 horses to the Belmont Stakes in his career. On Saturday it’s Optimizer, ridden by Corey Nakatani.
He said I’ll Have Another defied the odds by winning the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes in an era that rarely produces Triple Crown winners.
“Years ago you could run the Triple Crown races and you didn’t have to worry about earnings and big fields and all that other stuff. That’s the difference,” said the 76year-old Lukas.
Trainer William “Billy” Turner, who guided Seattle Slew to the 1977 Triple Crown, said more inbreeding in recent years has produced fragile creatures who have lost their capability for endurance.
“First of all, we don’t breed very many horses that will go that far,” Turner said, referring to buyers’ obsession with speed. “Years ago there was a large body of horses in the gene pool that could go a mile and half. But not today.” Only two previous Triple Crown contenders failed to make it to the starting gate due to injury. They were Burgoo King in 1932 and Bold Venture in1936. Nearly 80 years ago.
FINALLY THE FAVOURITE
I’ll Have Another would have entered gate 11 on Saturday as the favourite, a first in his career. The horse that twice ran down highly regarded Bodemeister at Churchill Downs, then at Pimlico, had finally convinced pundits he was no fluke. Gutierrez, who for six years white-knuckled his way around Vancouver’s tiny Hastings Park, had shown he was legitimate. The horse’s financial worth? Earnings of $2.6 million. Trainer Doug O’Neill, who will soon begin serving a 45-day drug suspension for an incident in 2010, took care to say I’ll Have Another was not lame. That he probably could have run Saturday in what’s called the “test of the champion.” “Could he run and compete? Yes. But would it have been in his best interests? No.” The horse will still make an appearance at the track. In a ceremonial tribute, Gutierrez will be aboard I’ll Have Another to lead the Belmont Stakes post parade. “I’ll Have Another’s ability to lead the post parade for (the) Belmont Stakes is an illustration of the character of his injury,” Dr. Larry Bramlage, an orthopedic surgeon and oncall vet for the Belmont Stakes, said in a statement. “It is absolutely of no concern for submaximal exercise but it would be a concern at a mile and a half at full speed.” The post parade will fool no one, of course. Thoroughbred racing needed I’ll Have Another’s story to play out on the track — at full speed, heart and lungs pumping frantically. Instead he’ll be led away from a world that finally embraced him, with so many wondering what might have been.