I’ll Have Another crosses finish line ahead of Bodemeister to win 2012 Kentucky Derby. The 3-year old colt was scratched because of tendinitis Friday from Saturday's Belmont Stakes.
Becomes 12th to win initial legs of Triple Crown
since Affirmed, instead of 12th to win all three
WAS 4-5 MORNING LINE FAVORITE EARLY FRI.
By Alan Z. Forman
I’ll Have Another won’t have another victory: The Preakness and Kentucky Derby come-from-behind winner has been scratched from Saturday’s 144th Belmont Stakes at Elmont, N.Y., ending what may have been Thoroughbred racing’s best bet for a Triple Crown since Affirmed last accomplished the feat on June 10, 1978.
A victim of tendinitis, the fast-finishing winner of the first two Triple Crown jewels will not race again but will be retired by his owners and trainer rather than risk breaking down or pulling up lame as a result of his swollen left front tendon.
Track insiders however said there was a more insidious reason for his being scratched, and also retired.
He is expected to command millions of dollars in stud fees and could fetch as much as $7-$9 million as a stallion prospect. His value at stud would have been twice that had he won the Triple Crown.
But instead of becoming the twelfth Triple Crown winner the three-year-old thus becomes the twelfth horse since Affirmed to win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness but not the Belmont. He is only the third horse to have won the Derby and Preakness yet fail to make it to the Belmont post.
Trainer Doug O’Neill told the Associated Press late Friday that I’ll Have Another had developed swelling in his left foreleg that was the beginning of tendinitis, dashing Thoroughbred racing’s hopes for a Triple Crown champion to help resurrect the struggling horserace industry.
O’Neill himself has been under a cloud. Nicknamed “Drug” O’Neill because of numerous medication and drug-related infractions, he recently received a 45-day suspension for giving one of his horses an illegal performance enhancing mixture, a penalty that will not take effect until after the Belmont.
Animal rights activists — notably PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) — have been highly critical of the racing industry, not just for overmedicating horses but for breeding them for speed at the expense of fragile legs unable in many cases to bear the horse’s weight and prone to breakage leading to death.
I’ll Have Another approaches the starting gate at Pimlico’s Preakness Stakes three weeks ago. The Derby/Preakness winner has been scratched from Saturday's Belmont Stakes, dashing hopes for the first Triple Crown winner in 34 years.
In 2006, Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro ran in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico as a heavy favorite, but false-started and then fractured his right hind leg, ending any chance of a Triple Crown that year and culminating in his death eight months later.
Horses’ fractured legs can rarely be effectively treated, leading to laminitis, a hoof infection that is almost always fatal. Despite more than a million dollars’ worth of treatment, it caused the euthanization of Barbaro in early 2007.
Trainer O’Neill’s brother said it was hard to tell anything was wrong just by looking at I’ll Have Another.
“He looks great,” Dennis O’Neill told AP Friday afternoon, but “you just can’t take a chance.
“He’s too valuable of a horse and we love him to death like all of them. You wouldn’t run a horse if you think something might happen.”
His brother has regularly defended himself against charges that he illegally drugs his horses, by declaring, without mentioning death, that he “love[s] them all.”
Racetrack insiders speculated Saturday that a slightly swollen tendon was hardly enough to warrant scratching I’ll Have Another from the Belmont, let alone a reason to retire him from racing for the rest of his life.
The “real reason,” said some, is that his trainer and owners are afraid to risk a full investigation into his being heavily drugged, which could involve serious charges and recriminations that would not only be financially damaging to them but could deal the already reeling Thoroughbred racing industry a devastating blow.
FAVORITE’S ROLE FALLS TO DULLAHAN
With I’ll Have Another out of the running, the favorite’s role fell to Dullahan, who ran third in the Derby and had been second in the morning line for the Belmont behind I’ll Have Another, who was the early 4-5 favorite.
Dullahan’s early odds are now 9-5 as of press time.
Before 1978, two of the greatest Thoroughbreds ever, won the Triple Crown during the 1970s, Seattle Slew the year preceding Affirmed’s victory, and the legendary Secretariat in 1973, the first Triple Crown winner in a quarter century following Citation’s victory in 1948.
Known affectionately as Big Red, Secretariat ran the Derby in under two minutes — still a record — and won the Belmont by 31 lengths, one of the widest margins in the history of American turf.
In the months following Affirmed’s 1978 victory in the Belmont, the back-to-back Triple Crown champion was defeated twice by Seattle Slew in the only two matchups of Triple Crown winners in racing history, the Marlboro Cup Invitational Handicap at Belmont Park in September which Seattle Slew won by three lengths, followed by the Jockey Club Gold Cup in October, also at Belmont, in which Seattle Slew placed second by a bare nose to Exceller while Affirmed finished up the track, the result of a slipped saddle.
A study commissioned last year by the Jockey Club, the breed registry for Thoroughbred horses, found that only 22 percent of Americans have a positive impression of horse racing.
FOR DETAILS, CHECK OUT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS COVERAGE OF I’LL HAVE ANOTHER’S RETIREMENT (click here) along with several ESPN video reports (click here).
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org
UPDATE (Saturday @ 6:30 PM): Derby/Belmont favorite Union Rags, owned by renowned painter Jamie Wyeth and his wife Phyllis, came from behind in a photo finish minutes ago to win the 144th Belmont Stakes by a nose, edging out lead horse Paynter at the wire and thrilling a live and TV audience much diminished in size because of disappointment over the elimination of a chance for I’ll Have Another to win the Triple Crown. Co-favorite Dullahan, who was picked by former President Bill Clinton, fell behind early and was never a factor in the race.
