HASKIN: Expect Animal Kingdom status news today..
 

Steve Haskin told ATR listeners that definitive news regarding Animal Kingdom's health status is likely to come later today, and speculation is that he may be sidelined for the summer...

That's too bad - any speculation on what the "injury" is?

Should have stayed on the turf.

Terrbile. I was looking forward to the haskell.

Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom exited Saturday's Belmont Stakes with an undisclosed injury. Details of the injury and how long the 3-year-old colt will be out of action will be revealed later Thursday.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/mo...s_unknown.html

No surprise considering what happened at the start of the Belmont. Thank goodness nothing catastrophic happened to AK or JV during the race.

I hope AK will be 100% in the long run. I think AK is a great horse. All three of his TC races showed me he's got talent and determination. I agree with Steve Davidowitz's comments from yesterday's show.

This news suks. :(

His stumble reminded me of Afleet Alex's who may've gone on to win the Belmont but I believe they suspected the Preakness incident led to the injury that eventually forced his retirement. Maybe discovering it before AK runs again means he won't have had a chance to make it worse, and his career will continue.

Afleet Alex did run and win the Belmont.

I know that. The "may've" wasn't to illustrate doubt about whether he did or did not. It's to say that even though he did win the Belmont, it was with the Preakness stumble injury beginning to fester, and he won the Belmont in spite of it. Going 1 1/2 miles couldn't have helped. I definitely read more than one piece that had the owners believing the retirement injury came from the stumble. If they'd found anything post-Preakness, he wouldn't have necessarily gone in the Belmont and maybe we have him running later into the season without the early retirement. Then again they did get him a second classic win so it's hard to go too far into the 'what if' on that one.

That's quite a diagnosis doctor.

Now don't go demonstrating common sense and logic here, you'll just be mocked by the local horse racing intelligensia ;)

In both cases it could have had something to do with both horses stumbling. But in both cases, each horse ran very well after their stumbling episodes.
I think another factor that might have furthered any type of injury (if there was an actual one that wasn't caught) is that both horses raced in all 3 Triple Crown races.

Afleet Alex's arthritic ankle was likely the result of his unorthodox, yet much ballyhooed, "twice a day" training regimen, as a opposed to a single incident like the stumble.

If any one thing sent him to the shed with a bullet, it was the ridiculous 5f in :59+ he endured in his first work back, a mere 60 days after having a screw inserted in his cannon bone.

Don't contradict the resident Vet.

Read more: http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-raci...#ixzz1PTWg1lKC

Mine That Bird with balls

This doesn't make much more sense to me than asserting that Premier Pegasus's injury or Uncle Mo's health problems are due to them NOT galloping twice a day. Trying to find cause/effect is pretty tricky business.

As have many horses that emerged unscathed. see avatar. And it probably doesn't merit mentioning that there is no shortage of injured horses that have not run in any TC races.

It would be interesting to look at ALL horses that have run in all 3 TC races over the past 20 years and see how many were injured soon after the Belmont. But again it would be difficult to interpret the data. Any horse that does very well in the TC is going to be gone over VERY carefully, in a way that is more likely to turn up minor injuries.

--Dunbar

Next up: Irwin sues Maragh for loss of the winner's share of the Haskell purse.

Betcha not.

It should make sense. When you buy a used car, don't you care about the mileage?

Yes, I would care about a car's mileage. But then cars, unlike humans and horses, can't make themselves stronger with exercise.

--Dunbar

Can humans and horses over do it?

I know my old 76 Caprice Classic absolutely thrived on hay, oats and water.

I made the Mine that Bird - Animal Kingdom comparison with a couple friends recently. Their respective runs in the Triple Crown races are strikingly similar. That being said, I have to think Animal Kingdom is a more talented animal than Mine that Bird and is going to go on to win some nice races somewhere provided he stays healthy.

Then again, maybe he's the third Derby winner in a row to make the Derby his last career win?

Can someone tell Joe Drape about this? He will be so sad to find out a non-steroided up, relatively slow, foreign influenced bred horse like AK can actually be injured.

This never would have happened if Lasix were banned....

You are absolutely right here.

Am I disillusioned. I thought Drape was a respectable "journalist" who liked TB racing SPORT. He did expose the Paragallo debacle, so he gets a star there. But he has turned out to be a misinformed, arrogant jerk.

He is an empty suit. He doesn't understand the basics of this sport as it pertains to PROFESSIONAL athletes, who in this case are race horses. What an @ss.

He doesn't understand the economics of the sport either. He was pontificating on WFAN to Mike Francesca that "racing should close down in the winter" specifically alluding to NY. What a jerk.

Francesca had the NYRA CEO Hayward on after Drape and Hayward blew that drone Drape's bs opinions away. He simply explained in ECONOMIC terms that the horses, trainers, owners at AQU are completely different than the same at Belmont or Sar. Think of AQU as a "different track". These owners.trainers race at the AQ meet. That is when they make money winning races. DUH!

My recollection of this is that the blow he suffered caused part of the cannon bone to become necrotic, much the same sort of bone injury as Bo Jackson suffered to his hip. It would have broken had he kept racing.