Barbaro News

	Barbaro is still recovering from his horrific accident three months ago at the Preakess, but his improvement has been steady. AP

On Tuesday evening, trainer Michael Matz sat down at his home in rural Pennsylvania and watched the Preakness. It had been a while since he'd seen a rerun of the May 20 race in which his Kentucky Derby winner, Barbaro, was pulled up by jockey Edgar Prado 15 seconds into the race with multiple fractures in his lower right hind leg.

That was a long, sad day, beginning in cool sunlight at Pimlico and ending in darkness at an animal hospital in Pennsylvania, where began the battle to save Barbaro's life. It was a day that took its place in racing lore, alongside those days when Ruffian and Go For Wand went down and sent the entire racing community into a funk that hasn't fully lifted.

What's more, Matz's wife, D.D., couldn't stomach watching replays of the Preakness, in which Barbaro is seen clearly distressed and confused, the lower part of his injured leg flopping inertly. "She doesn't want to see it ever again,'' said Matz. But D.D. was away for a week with the family's four kids, leaving Michael alone. So he watched.

"I wanted to see if something happened, if anything happened,'' Matz said. "I couldn't see anything. I think he just took a bad step. That's what I thought then, and that's what it still looked like.''

There was a pause on the other end of the phone line. I could picture Matz holding the cell phone to his jawbone. Matz shouted something at his barn workers about raking the barn area properly, the kind of thing you hear a trainer shout a dozen times a day.

I thought about Preakness Day, when I saw Matz a couple of hours before the race. He talked about having sent Barbaro out for a pre-dawn gallop. "He needed that gallop,'' Matz said, brimming with confidence.

Now he started talking again. "The morning of that race,'' Matz said. "I thought they might as well have handed me the trophy right there. He was a such a great horse and he was so ready to run.''

Another pause.

"Maybe I had him too ready that day,'' says Matz. "I don't think I made a mistake; I think I had him in good condition. But when something like this happens, you second-guess yourself. It's only human.''

It was a theory that railbirds who couldn't help themselves floated in the aftermath of Barbaro's injury. The strapping colt had raced lightly. The Preakness was only his fourth start in 139 days. Maybe he wasn't seasoned enough. This was the same rationale that handicappers applied before the Derby, which Barbaro won by a comical six lengths. It's all nonsense. Nobody knows why Barbaro's leg snapped in the Pimlico loam. It just did. Horses are big animals with small limbs. Still, Matz beats himself up because he is only human.

He visits Barbaro every day at the New Bolton Center and changes the bandages on the colt's left hind leg, the one afflicted with laminitis, a disease that arose in July and poses the greatest threat to Barbaro's survival. Barbaro recently got outside his stall to graze, his first time in the sunlight since the Preakness. It was a major step in the horse's recovery, but doesn't alleviate the one element that most cuts at Matz.

"Every time I walk into his stall,'' says Matz, "he looks at me like he wants to do something.'' Much like he stood on the Pimlico track, confused that his jockey had stopped him, shocked that his body had betrayed him. Now Barbaro wants to run again. Which he will never do.

This weekend the racing world turns its attention to Saratoga, where Preakness winner Bernardini will try to assume leadership of the 3-year-old division with a victory in the Travers. After Barbaro's Kentucky Derby win, many handicappers and veteran horsemen predicted that his combination of cruising speed and stamina would carry him to the Triple Crown. Perhaps easily.

But consensus shifts quickly in the horse business. Even as Barbaro fought for his life after the Preakness, some handicappers suggested that he would not have beaten Bernardini in the Preakness. We'll never know. The underlying tragedy of Barbaro's injury is the loss of competition, which is the essence of racing and, indeed, of sport. Imagine if Bernardini had beaten a healthy Barbaro in the Preakness and then Barbaro had come back to win the Belmont Stakes. What a race the Travers would be.

Matz is a competitor, a three-time Olympic equestrian. "It hurts to be standing on the sideline,'' he says. "I wish I could send Barbaro out there to run. I can't, and I have to accept that we were lucky to have him as long as we did.''

Matz has other horses in the barn, including unraced 2-year-old colts by Came Home, Cherokee Run and Seeking The Gold. "Nice colts, but if you're asking me about my Triple Crown chances, compared to him,'' Matz said, letting out a loud laugh, "well, it looks like I'm in trouble.''

He will run a horse on Saturday at Saratoga, amidst the ancient elm trees and all the history that a track can muster. Then he will watch the Travers, because he always enjoys watching good racehorses in a big race. Although on this day, probably not as much as usual.