Now Quality Road refuses to board plane
 

Looks like the horse is a real head case. Are there straight jackets for horses?

http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-raci...-will-van-home

Instead of vanning him back to NY. they should just send him right to south Fla. The starter ( Jeff Powell ) down there will get him to load correctly.

(From the owner,) Initially, the gate crew handled things what I perceived to be very properly, patting him on the head and neck and reassuring him. He already was agitated and hesitant and they tried to do things in a calm way. Then they went right away to the harsh stuff, like the blindfold. It went from not loading to dangerous pretty quickly.

Get a grip son, I think they should of grabbed both his ear and lip to drag his a s s in and then fined your butt for sending a green race horse to the Classic. How can you blame the gate crew!

This could very well be the owners fault. This horse had NO gate issues when running for Jimmy Jerkens.

I can't tell if this is sarcastic.

Folks - these are horses. I just watched a horse on TV scared to step into a small pond. They can be borderline nuts sometimes, much like a lot of people we converse with here!

I really only watch NY racing on a day-to-day basis and all I'll say about the whole thing is that there are usually a number of different things that the NY gate crew try to get an unruly horse in (walking them around, linking arms and pushing, or simply waiting for the horse to calm down) that the gate crew at SA really didn't try.

I, of course, have never tried to put a horse in the starting gate, so my opinion is incomplete, but it did seem like there were more things that could have been tried.

I also can understand that QR should have been schooled at SA but you can't simulate race conditions with a mare loading to his inside.

NT

If it were a dirt track, he would have walked in right away no doubt.

There are actually people on Facebook saying he is on cocaine. :zz:

Really?

face/palm

Teh stupid, it burns.

I really felt for the gate crew- talk about a no-win situation. They've got a very expensive animal absolutely freaking on them, and 13 other very expensive animals with the potential to start freaking any second. It's well and good for the barn manager to say, oh, they started out doing the right thing, petting him and reassuring him, but then just moved on to severe things too fast, but how long were they supposed to pet him at the expense of the other horses' nerves? And the gate can't scratch him themselves, can they? Even if they could, then they've got an angry owner and angry bettors to deal with. I thought they did the best they could in an impossible circumstance- one of the last horses to load freaking out right before the biggest race of the year.

Though I'd like to put that footage on my iphone so I can bring it up whenever a well-meaning friend says,"But isn't it mean to make horses run around in a circle?" and don't believe me when I tell them it's very hard to get a 1000 pound animal to do something he doesn't want to do.

(And then when they ask if he was on cocaine I will face/palm again.)

I'm tellin you all, it's PG's fault.

Look at the two horses he has hyped for months and how high his expectations were for the BC with these two horses.

First, Zensational didn't break from the gate well at all. It was like he was afraid to leave the gate and it cost him dearly.

I honestly believe that Quality Road saw Zensational's failed attempt at not running, and decided to take more drastic measures so as to not risk injury to himself or his reputation.

Think about it!

I don't understand the need to lead horses into the gates in numerical, double-file order. If getting them in is more an issue than keeping them in, shouldn't you load the troublesome horses first instead of keeping the rest of the horses loaded? On the other hand, if you have a horse who freaks if he is in for too long...then load he/she last.

Am I missing something?

I would think it becomes a fairness issue- horses can load great, but if they stand too long they can start to relax and get caught flat-footed at the break. So I imagine trainers would start claiming their horse has to be loaded near the end, in order to take advantage of a short wait before the gates open. But that's just a guess.

Morty would probably say he was afraid to board the plane because he was seated next to GenuineCrazyLady.

Now that she's back it's only fair that Morty is welcome. Right?

Tell them all the BC horses came back clean :tro: (Bloodhorse.com)

On second thought, they should of put that saddle back on and rode his a s s back to Belmont. I'm sure he would be well mannered and much fitter.:D

A current DRF.com article says the Clark is also under consideration...The pace there would be much softer and I could see him CRUSHING THEM if hes right. It would be a nice step into next year.

I really hope he goes to the Clark!

Sarcasim, a shot towards me, or honesty?