I've been looking all over the internet to see if there is any update on Barbaro, who was injured yesterday in the Preakness. I haven't been really able to find anything. I did find an interview with the veternarian who treat him at the track from the official Preakness site:
POST RACE NEWS CONFERENCE
MODERATOR ERIC WING: We are joined by Dr. Larry Bramlage, the on call veterinarian today representing the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP). Dr. Bramlage thanks for coming down to speak to us.
Could you give us an update on the condition of Barbaro?
DR. BRAMLAGE: At this point he's been x-rayed so we know the injury, he has a fracture both above and below the ankle. Dr. Dan Dreyfuss is his attending veterinarian who took the radiographs.
The way that practical happens is they break the one above the ankle first, and they have so much energy and adrenaline that they try to keep running. It would be very much analogous to someone twisting their ankle badly and fracturing their ankle. They can stay in bed. Tried to keep running and he broke the bone just below the ankle because of the instability of the scenario.
The problems that brings up are two-fold. One, there are significant danger to the blood supply to the lower limb. That's the one you worry about the most as far as this being a life-threatening injury, but equally as important is that's an injury that you or I would be put in bed for six weeks before we were allowed to walk on it, and that's impossible to do with a horse.
So it's going to take some sort of major stabilizing surgery. The preliminary word was he was going to go to the University of Pennsylvania for treatment, but there's a couple of steps to take care of before that.
First of all, he didn't get a chance to run the race, so he is still full of energy. So they've tranquilized him and settled him down in the stall, and then you have to stabilize the limb in some fashion for transport so that he doesn't do additional damage to it while he's hauled up there.
So there's some major hurdles here. This is a significant injury, and there are at least a couple of things that it are very life-threatening for him. His career is over. This will be it for him as a racehorse.
Under the best of circumstances, we're looking go try to save him as a stallion.
Q. Just to confirm, Dr. Bramlage, is it the right hind ankle?
DR. BRAMLAGE: The right hind ankle. And the fractures are fracture of the bone just above and a serious fracture of the bone just below the ankle.
Q. Now, you said this was a touchy situation at best and that surgery was in the offing provided he could get that far. Best case scenario, when would he have this surgery in?
DR. BRAMLAGE: Well, that's somewhat depends on him. If you have your choice, you would like to settle the horse down, get him used to the fact that he has a fracture. He becomes a much better patient for anesthesia and recovery from anesthesia, which as everyone knows is a major obstacle for a horse like that for an animal of 1200 pounds.
But in some instances, the fracture is unstable enough that you'll take some intermediate route. We try not to take them immediately to the operating table because we know with a horse physiology and their psyche, especially, as I said in this scenario, he didn't get a chance to expend these energies.
He's still full of energy that they have to somehow deal with that psychological aspects of getting him under control and then taking him and make him a good patient for surgery and the anesthesia because this surgery will take some hours when they reconstruct him.
Q. Dr. Bramlage, Gary Stevens mentioned on the telecast before the race started that he seemed particularly revved up. Later he broke through the gate, and I presume he was vet checked after came back around before he was permitted to reenter the starting gate?
A Right.
Q. Could that, that pent-up energy in anyway have served as the foundation for this kind of trying to do too much, or is it just a total fluke in the same way that this could happen to any horse at any moment?
DR. BRAMLAGE: Any horse, any person. You know, why does a football player turn their ankle, break their tibia? Why does a basketball player blow out their knee. It's all of this excitement and energy certainly but that energy doesn't predispose the fact that he's going to have an injury. It has to be some sort of, you know, bad step, load the thing unevenly.
As everyone knows, they have six times our body weight and have about the same amount of ground surface as you or I do and those really elegantly built lower legs are very vulnerable to twisting it as just exactly the wrong ankle and create the fracture.
Q. Dr. Bramlage, before it was apparent to nay of us laymen that something was amiss, Edgar Prado was already in the process of pulling him up.
To what degree does the quickness of Prado's actions improve Barbaro's chances over the next 24, 48 hours?
DR. BRAMLAGE: Well, that relates to what I mentioned about the blood supply. The more steps he takes on an unstable limb, the more damage it's going to do to the blood supply.
Horses only have two relatively small arteries to that part of the leg and so it's critical that the horse get pulled up before they damage those too badly.
Edgar Prado probably knew something was wrong when that first fracture happened but the horse doesn't likely know that. They don't sense even in the end if Edgar had let him go he probably would have tried to chase him around the field because it doesn't hurt initially with all that adrenaline rush especially when you tear the covering of the bone where the -- where all nerve supply is.
The horse feels relatively nothing until the in inflammation set it. Edgar was probably more aware that he was injured than the horse was.
Q. Any questions from down here for Dr. Bramlage before we bring in the winning connection I'll repeat again for the benefit of those upstairs in the press box.
Could you attempt to clarify Dr. Bramlage when in your estimation the first fracture occurred? Was it after he broke through the starting gate, the actual running of the race? I mean after the real running of the race could it have happened earlier?
DR. BRAMLAGE: No, it couldn't have happened earlier because he broke out of the gate and was going whenever his action began to -- when Edgar felt something was wrong so this happened sometime after he was going in the what, the first future long or so.
At around that time and then it took him another hundred yards to get him slowed down. So, in my opinion, this had nothing to do with him breaking through the gate as far as a cause and effect of the fracture in his leg. He wouldn't have been able to go around the gate, get back in and break like he did.
Q. Alright. Well, Dr. Bramlage, we thank you very much for taking the time to explain the situation so professionally and I'm sure we all wish the best for Barbaro and thanks again for your information.
THE WITNESS: You're welcome.