[TouchOfGrey]

Dr. Dean Richardson of the New Bolton Research Center examined a nuclear scan June 15, which indicated that something was amiss with the colt's left hock. On Thursday, both Dr. Richardson and Dr. Larry Bramlage of Rood & Riddle Veterinary Clinic in Lexington, examined radiographs of the hock and discovered a small fissure on the tip of the cannon bone where it joins the lower part of the hock.

The injury is thought to have occurred at the start of the June 11 Belmont Stakes (gr. I) when Animal Kingdom was bumped by Mucho Macho Man, causing him to clip heels with another horse and stumble badly while nearly unseating jockey John Velazquez. New York stewards on June 15 handed down a seven-day suspension to jockey Rajiv Maragh for careless riding for initiating the incident. Maragh was riding Isn't He Perfect, who appeared to come over on Mucho Mach Man right after the break, which caused the chain reaction that led to Animal Kingdom’s near fall.

“It's not a major thing,” said Dr. Bramlage. "I agree with Dr. Richardson that the best course of action is to keep the colt inactive for two weeks and radiograph the leg again. In two weeks it should settle down and he should be sound again. I don't think it is going to separate, but that would be the worry.

“Right now it is a tiny crack and technically you could call it a fracture. But I would characterize it as more of a fissure because of how small it is. He lit up pretty good on the nuclear scan. Normally, no matter how hard a horse hits his leg on the ground in an accident, there is not enough force to show this type of uptake on the scan for a period of at least 10 days. This tells me that, like a lot of racehorses, he probably had a little something going on in there that he was dealing with. But when he hit the ground with such force in the accident, he overloaded the bone and this is the result.

“The good news is that this should not cost him the entire season. I would hope that he would be able to return to training in a matter of weeks.”

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