Lost in the Fog/cancer
 

Has anyone else heard about this? Read it on another forum, could be why he didnt run as well last few starts this year.

Yes. If you look in the thread titled "Lost in the Fog has colic" you will see some discussion about this.

No wonder he ran so poorly in his last race. They say that he has a pretty big cancer mass on his spleen. These things don't just get huge overnight. He obviously had it in his last race. I think there is a great likelihood that this was one of the reasons why he ran so poorly last time.

Richi, is this something that he could come back from an race? what a great story it would make for cancer survivors/people going through it

or is he in all likelhood done?

It really would be a great story, about as real as the fairytale horse movie Dreamer unfortunately . Retirement and survival are about the best we can expect . Hopefully that is what will happen .

I'm not sure if he could come back or not. I will check with one of my trainers and ask them if they think it is possible to come back from something like this. By the way, they said the tumor is the size of a cantalope so you know it has been there for a while. There is no doubt that this was affecting his performance.

Usually with lymphomas, involvement is sytemic. If the spleen is removed as well as the tumor on it, performance is greatly diminished . If the cancer has spread elsewhere, the horse's future may be compromised . The surgery in itself is rare, so more than likely your trainer will not be much help here . Aleo is currently searching for a really good surgeon . This is serious . Any thoughts of a return to racing are not .

http://www.thehorse.com/viewarticle.aspx?ID=167


Although the spleen performs several important functions, it is not essential to life. That is, animals and humans can lead a healthy life after removal of the spleen. However, the reservoir of red cells contained within the spleen of the horse plays an important role during exercise. At the start of exercise, the spleen contracts and thereby releases the stored red cells into general circulation. In fact, up to one-third of the horse's red cells are stored within the spleen. One of the main functions of red cells is to transport oxygen from the lung to other parts of the body. Therefore, the increase in blood volume associated with splenic contraction provides a tremendous boost in the horse's capacity to transport oxygen. Indeed, this high capacity for oxygen transport contributes to the high athleticism of the horse. We know this to be true because following removal of the spleen, horses suffer a sharp decline in athletic ability.

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I think he will be lucky to live personally. If they remove the spleen (and how can they not) no way he can run. That's all assuming it hasn't metasticized anywhere else.

Thank you. And may I suggest that a spleen with a cantaloup sized tumor on it may not work that well under the stresses of racing as well ??

Wonder if they can get him another spleen....I was just curious because if he were to come back from this and win a couple huge races, it would be national and movie type stuff, I am calling Aleo now for the ok to write the script (jk)

Laughter is the best medicine, but surely this is a failed placebo .

i just read about fog on t'bred times. what horrible news.

and yes, the spleen may not be necessary, but i read that survival of the surgery for this is only 50/50. not exactly good odds...and they are running more tests first. if the cancer has spread than it doesn't seem from their remarks that surgery would still be an option.

hoping for good news, that the cancer is still just in the spleen. that in itself is bad enough.

The article at Bloodhorse.com said the tumor is the size of a football. The Lost in the Fog bashers were right. LITF was running bad because he's not a very good horse. It had nothing to do with the football size tumor on his spleen. LOL.

What a hard knocking campaigner he was. He ran wherever and whenever and I'm sure he and his connections had one helluva year last year. I hope he can recover.

I participated in those threads and I never remember anyone making an argument that he was not a very good horse. Might I suggest just letting it go now. Whether it affected his performance or not at this point seems irrelevant to me.

This is the first time I've heard of cancer in a prominent thoroughbred ... since Bold Ruler died from it in 1971. But his cancer wasn't diagnosed until he was a 15YO.

Does anyone else know of another prominent thoroughbred who developed serious cancer? Or one so young as Lost In The Fog?

And the carpers don't say WHEN it started affecting his performance.

Was it during his ten-race winning streak ... or just since his eleventh race?

As you say ... it's irrelevant now. Let's just hope he can be treated ... and survive.

THis is true. Nobody said he was a bad horse they just claimed he had never faced a high level of competition. There are some like myself who maybe wrongly saw the horse and proclaimed him a freak and very special. I still think he is/was, there are very few horses I have seen run like this horse. I am very unfamiliar with this sort of malady in horses and appreciate some the info given on this board.

This type of cancer presents in horses from 5-10 years old . Easy Goer had cancer at eight . The size of LITF's tumor nearly covers the entire spleen . Oxygenation is aided by the spleen . Draw your own conclusions . This is a very grave situation .

Lost in the Fog Has Cancer and Awaits Risky Operation


Article Tools Sponsored By
By BILL FINLEY
Published: August 17, 2006

Lost in the Fog, a sprinter whose blazing speed has carried him to 10 stakes victories, has been found to have a rare and potentially fatal case of lymphoma.
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He was taken to a veterinary clinic at the University of California-Davis this week after developing what appeared to be a routine case of colic. While he was there, doctors performed a sonogram that revealed a cantaloupe-size cancerous mass in his spleen, his trainer, Greg Gilchrist, said. The horse’s racing career is over, Gilchrist said, and the focus has shifted to saving his life.

“This will not be unlike the situation with Barbaro,” Gilchrist said, adding that the owner Harry Aleo was prepared to spare no expense in an effort to save Lost in the Fog, a 4-year-old colt who won a 2005 Eclipse Award. “We have always put the horse first, and nothing will change,” Gilchrist said. “We will just do the best we can for him.”

Gilchrist said that if the cancer went untreated, Lost in the Fog would survive for no more than a year.

“We could go with radiation and chemotherapy, but I don’t think that will happen,” Gilchrist said. “We will probably choose to remove his spleen and hope that the cancer has not metastasized and spread.”

Few surgeons have performed this type of surgery, Gilchrist said. “The tricky thing is that he is 50-50 to make it through the operation,” he said. Further tests will be done tomorrow to see if the cancer has spread beyond the spleen. If it has, no surgery will be performed, he said.

If Lost in the Fog recovers, he could go on to a career as a sire.

After winning his first 10 races, including the Grade I King’s Bishop at Saratoga, Lost in the Fog had his lone defeat in 2005 in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

He was not the same horse this year, losing two of three starts, including a ninth-place finish in his last race, the Smile Sprint Handicap at Calder on July 15.

“Something like this is very rare,” the New Jersey-based veterinarian Dr. Allan Wise said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case of lymphoma in a horse that age. Usually, it would involve an older horse, like an old broodmare. I never heard of it in a fairly young, athletic horse. There are some theories that a horse can get this when something goes wrong with the immune system, but we don’t know what or why. That’s why it is usually the very old that get this; their immune systems are too old.”

Gilchrist says he thinks the lymphoma was at least partly responsible for Lost in the Fog’s poor form this year.

“It could have been there for a year and it’s definitely been there for the last six months,” Gilchrist said. “It shows you that this horse has the heart of a lion. It certainly could explain why he had some subpar performances.”

These guys thought that he had no excuse in his last race. They simply thought that he was overmatched and that was why he finished where he did. They thought that that was the best he is capable of running. They were totally wrong. He ran as bad as he did because of the football-sized tumor. I'm not saying whether or not he would have won the race. I'm simply saying that the horse did not fire and now we know why. I don't know if it cost him 5 lengths or 10 lengths but I think it is pretty obvious that as huge as the tumor is right now, that it was certainly affecting him last month.

If you guys don't think that a tumor this size was affecting him last month, you need your heads examined. Ask any vet or any trainer and they will tell you that this has certainly been affecting him for some time. It's not an exact science. They couldn't tell you that it was costing him 2 lengths eight months ago and 4 lengths four months ago. They couldn't tell you anything like that but they could certainly tell you that it had a huge effect on him last month. Knowing the size of it right now, we know that it was very advanced a month ago.

The two vets sites I saw remarking on the age groups that present this cancer said otherwise . Regardless, the situation is grave and we can only hope for the best . There have been discrepensies in a lot of the reports as well . All agree that the situation is both rare and bad .

Enough already, Rupe.

If you're going to use this illness to "explain" his losses ... when does it stop? Do you go back to his loss to Carthage ... or all the way back to the BC Sprint ... and if so, how do you explain the ten-race winning streak?

Let it lie ... and hope the horse comes out OK.

That mostly answers the question I had about the rareness of cancer in thoroughbreds ... and the unusual nature of it striking such a young horse.

Don't they do routine bloodwork on good racehorses? You would think that something like this would have came up when they got the results back, no?

Good question, Tom.

Either way, I'm with Rupert on this... there were a TON of people trashing this colt last month and now it turns out he had a legitimate reason for running so poorly. I hope they caught this in time.

I wouldn't go back very far because there's no way to know when it started to really affect him. I'm only saying it affected his performance in the race last month which you know is true.

More on LITF from the San Francisco Chronicle

Lost in the Fog, one of the most successful and popular Northern California racehorses, has been retired and faces surgery for a cancerous growth discovered in his spleen.

Trainer Greg Gilchrist said he and owner Harry J. Aleo decided Sunday morning to end the 4-year-old colt's racing career because of chronic cracks in his hooves and planned to make a formal announcement Monday.

But later Sunday, Lost in the Fog showed signs of colic, and after being examined by Dr. Donald Smith, he was sent to the veterinary hospital at UC Davis, where a mass the size of a cantaloupe was found in his spleen.

"About a week ago, I started noticing small things," Gilchrist said. "His eating habits kind of changed, he seemed a little lethargic, and his temperature elevated about a half-degree to a degree and then back down again. One thing by itself is not an alarm, but when you put them all together, it is. We ran a bunch of tests and couldn't find anything, so we just kept monitoring him.

"At about 4 p.m. Sunday, my assistant called and said his temperature had gone up to 102, which is about 1 1/2 degrees over his normal. But at 102, you have to start thinking what if it goes higher? He was showing discomfort in his stomach, and you're thinking it's a classic case of colic."

Colic is a disease stemming from gas in the intestines that often is fatal to horses.

"We tried to get him to move around to get his intestines to start working again and at that point Dr. Smith said his spleen was kind of pushed over," Gilchrist said. "A normal horse you would have left at the barn and worked it out, but we put him on a van and he got to UC Davis in the early afternoon.

"They did a sonogram from head to toe and at that point this large mass was found in his spleen. Late Monday they ... took a biopsy of the spleen, and yesterday (Tuesday) I got the bad news that the biopsy had come back cancerous. I've trained horses for over 30 years and I never had one with cancer. It's too bad it had to be this one."

Purchased by Aleo for $140,000 from his Florida breeder, Lost in the Fog burst onto the racing scene with a 71/2-length victory in his career debut at Golden Gate Fields on Nov. 14, 2004. Six weeks later, he set a track record of 1:13.55 for 6 1/2 furlongs in a 143/4-length victory in the Arizona Juvenile Stakes at Turf Paradise.

In 2005, Lost in the Fog won his first eight races while venturing three times each to Florida and New York. He ran twice locally against overmatched opponents, setting a track record of 1:07.32 in the Golden Bear Breeders' Cup Stakes at Golden Gate Fields on May 14, 2005, and winning the Bay Meadows Speed Handicap on Oct. 1.

He took a 10-race unbeaten streak into the Breeders' Cup Sprint on Oct. 29 at Belmont Park and went off the 7-to-10 favorite, but faded to seventh after leading in the early stretch.

Despite the loss in the most important race of his career, victories in such events as the Grade 1 Kings Bishop Stakes and the Grade 2 Carry Back, Riva Ridge and Swale stakes earned Lost in the Fog an overwhelming edge in voting for the Eclipse Award as the nation's outstanding sprinter of 2005.

Brown Bess, the female turf champion of 1989, is the only other Northern California horse to win an Eclipse Award.

After the Breeders' Cup, Lost in the Fog spent two months at the ranch in Florida where he was raised and returned to Gilchrist's barn at Golden Gate Fields in January.

He finished second to Carthage in the Golden Gate Fields Sprint Handicap on April 22 in his first start of 2006, then won the Grade 3 Aristides Breeders' Cup Handicap on June 3 at Churchill Downs.

But he ran the worst race of his career in a ninth-place finish in the Grade 2 Smile Sprint Handicap on July 15 at Calder.

"Harry and I discussed it, and we said enough is enough," Gilchrist said. "He is so valuable as a stallion that it becomes a deal where you have everything to lose and nothing to gain by continuing to race him. Even winning races wouldn't necessarily do any good, except winning the Breeders' Cup Sprint. We were pointing to that race (Nov. 5 at Churchill Downs) for the end of the year, but the foot problems never went away. Things weren't going our way, and it's the time of the year when farms are interested in purchasing new sires."

So Lost in the Fog ended his racing career with 11 wins and a second in 14 starts for $978,099 in earnings.

"He was the best horse I ever rode," said Russell Baze, the Hall of Fame jockey who accompanied Lost in the Fog in all but one of his races. "He accomplished things that no other horse I ever rode accomplished -- all the different tracks and doing it all so impressively. He's a one-of-a-kind horse."

Now he's in a race for survival.

"On Friday, they're planning on running a small camera through his abdomen to check and see if there is any more cancer," Gilchrist said. "We hope they don't find anything, and if they don't, you move on to the next step. The choices are chemotherapy, radiation or surgery. If you do nothing, the horse would make it maybe a year. Neither Dr. Smith nor I felt chemo or radiation was good, so that leads to one choice: an operation to remove his spleen."

The surgery tentatively is scheduled for Wednesday, and doctors say Lost in the Fog has a 50-50 chance of survival.

"It's very complicated and not very common," Gilchrist said. "He's a warrior, and this is a race he really needs to win right here."

My cat had OK blood results and 1.5 weeks later they opened him up to find his stomach had almost no normal tissue left due to lymphoma. Blood tests are not always correct.