On this whole conspiracy thing - sheesh guys. It's not as bad as Pace Advantage over here, but not everything is a conspiracy! Some of these things happen at face value.


The horse got roughed up bad in the Derby.
When he came out, the primary concern was getting the hoof to attach back. They probably did the general "testing" for heat on his legs and it probably came back ok. His hoof healed quickly and they were probably excited and satisfied. They breezed him and he responded very well. Thats about it.

After the Preakness they went over with a "fine tooth comb" looking for problems/excuses which brings us up to date.


As far as being an excuse for his poor efforts - I think the Derby was a bad enough trip that he needs no excuse for that race. Ideally he would have recovered and started picking up horses late to get up for 5th or 6th, but there was really no shame in being eased home at that point. Anyone who tossed Friesan Fire "because of" the Derby should consider the proverbial "giving up the game".


In the Preakness he had another pretty bad trip. He broke to his knees. Instead of settling 5 lengths off the pace where the setup for him was more reasonable, Saez called on him for run early rushing up. At the same time Big Drama broke Friesan Fire's momentum and bore out on him. He had to fight through Big Drama early, while chasing a pace which annihilated the other chasers. However in the Preakness you would have liked to have seen him show some resistance, which he didn't.

Horses come back and run big races all the time after getting two bad trips in a row, some at good prices. The hardest part about keeping faith in that kind of situation is that with Friesan Fire, his nightmare trips coincided with his first true class test, and he didn't show any extraordinary signs of resistance.

i seriously doubt that his grabbed quarter was bad at all-he lost no training time, so it couldn't have been serious. if it was serious, then they had no business running him back. i think that injury was overblown and had no bearing on his derby loss.
the horse ran 1 1/16th in his last derby start. how they thought that as a final prep, and seven weeks to the derby was the way to get that colt prepared to run 10f i don't know-imo that's a far bigger reason for his lackluster performance than any supposed quarter injury.

the injury was pretty much secondary in the derby to the trip (which technically did happen to include getting stepped on and later kicked).

he may have had a cut here or a scrape there-but it wasn't worth mentioning, and certainly wasn't an excuse considering the following two weeks.
oh--but there was the 'miraculous healing'-i forgot that part. i think jones spouted off just after the race because he felt humiliated, and made things out to be far worse than they appeared. reminds me of when smith got off a horse-maybe giacomo-after a loss and said he thought the horse displaced. felt he had to give a reason. the trainer said nothing like that had happened, that the horse was fine.

The seven week layoff was something put out there by Jones almost immediately after the race, and it had more to do with Jones not wanting FF to regress off a huge new best. The idea being that a small bounce was inevitable if he ran back in one more prep and then he'd bounce to the moon in the derby.

that worked out well. thanks. i thought they had considered another start and then decided against it.

i think you are the missing the point. No one can draw any conclusions about the 7 week layoff, from the performance in the derby because the trip was so bad.

That's a challenge horse racing has ...to detect these types of fractures before a race so that the horse can be scratched and prescribed rest .

the only thing i've mentioned regarding the seven week layoff was the remark that maybe that indicated a problem with the horse physically that they didn't tell us at the time. but indian charlie says that's not the case. i think there are several reasons why friesan fire didn't run well-the layoff didn't help in my opinion. i think the main reason he finished far back is that the race went quicker early than many he had run this year, so of course he'd get left behind. the guy wrote in bloodhorse when making his pick (this was the magazine so i can't look up his name, exact quote because i'm at work) but he referenced the faster pace expected in the derby than what FF had faced in La this spring, that it caused doubt in his mind because of that.
at any rate, it's hard to say for sure exactly what is going on with all the trainers speak. all the horses do well before, but they're full of excuses after. but, my main point was that too many are blaming injuries suffered in the running of the derby-and my question is just how serious could they possibly have been since it didn't knock him out of training or running two weeks later? it's my opinion based on what they did after that the injury was dramatically overblown.
the horse ran well training up to the preakness, so i would imagine the injuries occurred during the running of the race.

Seriously - I'll be glad to show you radiographs where the stress fracture doesn't show (and I'm not talking about chips, detached or not, but stress fracture lines). You point out one time frame, above - in the time in the two-three weeks before osteoblasts start to repair a fracture and form a visible line of repair. In the digital radiographs of bucked shins where the microfractures are not detectable on radiograph, but are suspicious on scintigraphy. The horse carpus and tarsus can be extremely difficult to read, even using manipulativable digitals, for subtle stress fractures.

If the horse was a bit "off" after the Derby, and they radiographed the second day after the Derby - and even repeated the rads the day before the Preakness to be sure - it's entirely possible the stress fracture couldn't be appreciated.

I didn't see if they mentioned where the stress fracture was located - anybody? (I know they said where the chip was)

You know, chip fractures are sometimes left in and ignored unless they cause trouble, too. Depends a bit on location, etc.

I am very interested in what will happen when the Ruffian center being built by IEAH in NY opens, as I think that will have MRI or scintigraphy (can't remember which). There won't be the travel necessary as exists here in Lexington to get to a facility with that capability.

Cost, however, is the main deterrant for the use of both MRI and scintigraphy.

I'm a ma'am ;)

Didn't he also come out of the Derby, not only with the quarter grab, but with cuts on three legs, and a piece of vetwrap from another horses' leg wrap in his shoe? This horse was validly banged up in the Derby, from what I've read <g>

You do realize that's readily possible?

But as a horse owner, would you be willing to pay several hundreds of dollars every couple of weeks to check it out?

one more time.

if his injuries were so dammed serious, why did he miss NO training and run back in two weeks?! either they did him a disservice in running him back, or his 'injuries' were overblown. i don't know why i'm still having to explain that point.

there is no way he was that banged up considering the fourteen days after.

You might consider that your two options are not the only possibility.

If you are a horse are running in a race, and your legs are getting repeatedly struck and stung by horseshoes, other horses legs, you might back off and not do your best at that moment, too. Yet come out of the race cut and bruised, even with a stinging quarter grab, but pretty much are okay in a day or so when the cuts heal and the immediate bruising to the bone is cooled and the anti-inflammatories are on board. Especially when they check you out and you x-ray sound.

I don't know why I'm having to explain this point.

I wouldn't mind if you stopped, ma'am.

I think my brain has a stress fracture now. But I don't have the money to find out.

My apologies for not being on the conspiracy bandwagon. Carry on :tro:

i think this is the main reason friesan fire lost (from bloodhorse, may 2nd edition):

...he (ff) hasn't shown the ability to run better than 1:13 for three-quarters in either two-turn race. (the derby 3/4 time was 1:12).

and: based on the numbers, he must take a big step forward.


what amazes me is that the guy who wrote that picked friesan fire to win-it seems from reading the rest of the write-up, that choice was due to the pedigree, and the fact that jones got hard spun to a runner-up finish. my reply would be that this horse is no hard spun.

probably because i'm stubborn and hard-headed. and til your post, no one had put it that way. thanks.

But that's why we're friends - takes one to know one :D