Bernardini Wins Preakness; Barbaro Seriously Injured

Anticlimax and tragic injury for 1-2 favorite Barbaro.

What a strange race. Barbaro actually false started, breaking through the magnetic force that holds the starting gate together. After reloading they started again, and before they had run past the wire the first time Barbaro was pulled up by Edgar Prado with a serious injury to his hind right leg.

Brother Derek had another weird trip. Very slow out of the gate, pulled back and pulled wide in the front stretch, then wide again around the turn and along the backstretch, where he made a move to get to the front before fading and finishing I believe 4th.

Bernardini ran a huge race at 12-1, lived up to his talent, and simply outran his inexperience, making a huge move on the far turn and winning easily by 5.5 lengths. It will forever be overshadowed by what happened to Barbaro, but for a horse with only 3 career starts, who had never been around 2 turns to run that big in such a big race against that calibre competition is just amazing. This horse just might be a freak.


Bernardini wins big & stuffs it to the Preakness officials
who misspelled his name on his saddlecloth.

Sweetnorthernsaint ran a good race but finished 2nd, as he was simply beaten by a better horse today.

Hemingway's Key ran 3rd to hopefully save his manhood.

That was very much like the anticlimax & utter sadness of Charismatic's broken leg in the stretch of the 1999 Belmont. Like Chris Antley that day, Edgar Prado did an amazing and heroic job of easing the horse up as soon as possible to minimize the injury and maximize the chance that the horse can be saved. Barbaro's injury sure looks career ending. All we can do know is hope that the injury can be repaired and is not life-threatening. Nothing would be more tragic than for the current Derby winner to have to be put down. Hopefully the horse can be saved.


Hell, this is how I feel. I cannot imagine how
Mr & Mrs. Prado, Matz, and Jackson feel tonight.

More later...

***Update 3.41 p.m. PST***
X-rays are in: Barbaro has broken bones both above and below his right rear ankle. He will undergo a serious and lengthy surgery this evening. Apparently the keys are 1) how the blood supply to the area of his leg has been affected and 2) how the horse will react post surgery. It's not like human surgery where you just lay in bed. Some horses are able to assimilate to the cast and not make things worse, while others are not able to keep weight off it and after surgury re-injure it even worse (this famously happened to Alydar after surgery repaired his mysterious in-stall injury, and he rebroke the leg and had to be put down).

Again, we can only hope that the surgery is a success and that the horse can come out OK on the other side. My thoughts are with the horse as well as his connections, who right now are experiencing one of the most nightmarish evenings of their lives. My heart goes out to the horse and to them. I am sad, anxious, and my fingers are crossed.

***Update 8.06 p.m. PST***
Barbaro has been transported to the Widener Hospital for large animals at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center, which is known as the finest facility of its kind in the world. In depth information from on-track veterinarian Dr. Larry Bramlage here.


***Update Sunday 6.14 a.m. PST***
The latest.

Surgery is set for today. All we can do is hope for the best.

***Update Sunday 3.32 p.m. PST***
Barbaro is still in surgery, still fighting for his life.