several others didn't handle the course well either. should they all have pulled up? or just george, because his jock knows something bad is going to happen?
Not necessarily, but it wouldn't have been frowned upon either. Plenty of horses have pulled up in the BC when hopelessly beaten (eg Gentlemen, David Junior, Go and Go, Home At Last, etc).
However, of all the horses that failed to handle the main track yesterday, George Washington was the one traveling most conspicuously to the point where the possibility that something was amiss other than the surface came in to play.
he was already slowing down. i don't believe the jock was riding him at the point that the injury occurred.
I don't blame Kinane for what happened. Like I said, he probably assumed it was the surface that was causing the horse's poor action (and maybe it was). However, the fact that he wasn't driving on the horse when he broke down actually suggests that injury started much earlier in the race.
hell, horses have been out for a routine gallop, not even a work, and suffered catastrophic injuries.
That's totally unrelated to what happened here, but 9 times out of 10, horses that breakdown galloping have pre-existing injuries. I'm not going to suggest that's the case with George Washington.
this is no ones fault. it's part of racing. george could have had the same thing happen had he run in the mile.
If he was traveling as poorly in the Mile as he was in the Classic, it would have been better to pull him up there, too. In fact, maybe it would have tipped Kinane off better, if it was a type of going he knew the horse could handle.
this is why so many said thank goodness go for wand didn't run in the classic vs males, like so many wanted. her owner and trainer would have been torn to pieces.
Weren't they after the Distaff?
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