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Originally Posted by Revolution
I really doubt she was going to run with Henny Hughes in there. The ankle injury sounds like a good excuse for retirement after Bernardini wins the Classic by 5 lengths. "We were going to bring him back at 4 but he injured his ankle".  |
I don't know where you people come up with this stuff. I have never heard of an owner or trainer feigning injury so they could retire their horse. It's just the opposite. They usually try to claim that unsound horses are sound. A horse is not going to look as attractive as a stallion if people think he was unsound. The same thing can be said for broodmares. Do you remember the first thing that Marty Wygod said when he announced that Sweet Catomine was being retired. He said, "She is being retired sound." This was obviously nonsense. He wouldn't have retired her so early in the year if she was sound.
I think that some people have this illusion that owners feel like they need an excuse to retire a horse. Nothing could be further from the truth. When I make a decision whether or not to retire a graded stakes winner, the decision is going to be a combination of what is in the best interest of the horse and what the best business decision is. If I decided that the prudent thing to do was to retire the horse, do you think I would make up a story about an injury? Of course not. Why would I do that? That's the last thing I would do. If my horse was sound, the last thing in the world that I would want was to say that the horse has an injury. That could lessen my horse's value for breeding. I wouldn't want people to think the horse had an injury.