Heartbreak just a step away — Newsday.com, setting the scene for how horse injuries can happen, even to Kentucky Derby winners:
The year was 1999. The race was the Mother Goose, a prestigious stakes for 3-year-old fillies in late June at Belmont Park.
As trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. placed blinkers on the usually stoic Three Ring, she became fractious in her paddock stall. She reared, flipped, crashed to the ground and fractured her skull.
As she flailed about, bleeding from both nostrils and ears, Belmont’s chief examining veterinarian knew what he had to do. On the spot, Dr. Anthony Verderosa euthanized Three Ring.
“It was so violent, so quick,” Verderosa said last week as he watched horses return to the paddock from the track at Belmont. “Everyone around you is screaming, yelling, running, crying. But it was obvious the wound was fatal, and in that situation, you need someone who can keep a clear head. You’re in the eye of the storm. You need to be calm, be decisive. You don’t like it, obviously. Sometimes, you have no choice.”
Fatal injuries, despite the emotional and financial cost, are an inevitable part of the sport.
Here’s what I wrote at the time about that Saturday, June 26th, for everybody who asked:
A beautiful day at Belmont Park. The day was bright, a bit muggy, and we were there to see Three Ring race in the Mother Goose, a Grade I stakes that’s the second leg of the Triple Tiara, the NY filly version of the Triple Crown. She had won the first leg back on June 4th by a head, after a disastrous (and well-publicized) road trip to the 125th Kentucky Derby, where she came in dead last due to some bad bumps and a slipped saddle.
The clan was reunited at the Triple Crown Room (if Belmont was the Titanic, we were with the Astors) and we’d done okay with the betting, a little behind but we were going to make it up in our race. My dad was happy, having retired 22 hours earlier.
We went down to the paddock to watch Three Ring get saddled up. I was looking over at the stall, standing directly in front of it, having a discussion with Mr. Goldstein about Internet gambling, when she reared up. They were trying to put the blinders on her, and she got badly spooked — by something, we’ll never know what. She backed out of the stall and reared up. My suspicion is she cracked or broke a rear ankle when she reared — she went down, and fell on her right side, probably hitting her head on the ground at that time. She was shaking. I heard somebody say, “She’s scratched.”
At this point she attempted to get back up. Again, assuming the broken ankle, when she got on that the pain must have shot through her — for whatever reason, she bucked wildly, and slammed her head and neck against the paddock siding.
No news story described the sound of that impact. The closest analogue for that was the sound of a baseball bat hitting a fastball and breaking — that deep, shattering, splintering wood sound.
It is a sound nothing living should ever make.
She went down again, and was barely moving. The doctor reported blood coming out of her mouth and nose, although I wasn’t close enough to see it. The onlookers were horrified. I heard crying around me.
I rushed over to my dad and his ladyfriend’s side — this had happened to us last year, when our horse Best Friend Stro had been leading a race by five lengths, and broke down a hundred feet before the finish line. A fractured leg, and she had to be put down right there. She was also another phenomenal horse — she won the Best NY Filly of 1998. Posthumously.
He was clenched up tight. “Take Diana upstairs.”
“Right.” And I took her on a slow walk back up to the dining room. I heard a few onlookers, who hadn’t seen what happened, saying, “Boy, you look sad.”
We got back upstairs and I ordered Diana a decaffinated tea. I tried to console her while we were both watching the live broadcast from the paddock. The announcement came on, “A late scratch, Three Ring. Refunds on all bets on Three Ring will be honored. There will be a consolation Pick Three winner.” The live feed was telling us nothing else, the cameraman was studiously avoiding the stalls as the horses paraded around. The only thing I could see was a few of our crowd walking back up as the horses headed to the track, their backs to us.
The first person to make it to the room was Barry Schwartz, who I realize must have gotten up there to try and avoid the press. “Is she okay?” He made a hand motion, shook his head and said, “She’s down.”
She had won 6 of 10 starts and earned over three quarter of a million dollars. She was worth millions as a brood mare. My father owned one ninth, I’m his only heir. To put in strictly financial terms, take the value of say, your house, and watch it turn to $200 of cat food in less time than it takes a match to burn up.
But more than that, she was a champion, on her way to proving it.
I’ll skip the recap of grief there, you don’t know any of the people and, except for a few people vomiting, it all sounds the same. My dad and Diana left immediately, others went at other speeds. I did what I’ve always done, what my family always does– support services. I made sure everybody had everything they came in with, I got Ernie’s daughters and friends back into the city, improved their mood as best as possible, we all shared the usual tasteless humor (“Seriously, Jackie, what do think of Dallas?”) and when they decided that they were going to go out and demolish their higher brain functions to try and forget the day, I filled the role of unofficial older brother/chaperone. (I’m sorry, four young girls, three under drinking age, two under voting age, all incredibly stunning (one was mistaken for the actress who played Joan of Arc in the CBS miniseries) wandering around New York City during Pride weekend trying to get into bars– you better believe I was making sure they were okay. I had to hustle them out the side door of one bar when the cops came around. Karen, it was after you left.) I got them home late, and crawled into my own bed around 5:30 AM.
Brandy wasn’t there, she had gone to a concert down on the shore and was staying with a friend, so I left a message to call me ASAP on the cell phone. She called around 12:30 AM. “Well,” I started, “the good news is that we don’t have to spend your 30th birthday at the racetrack…”
