RSS Feed for this Blog

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Why Is This Horse Smiling?


Big Brown works five furlongs in 1:00 1/5 this morning.

Some readers wanted to know more about who/where/what is the money behind IEAH, and Joe Drape has the story in the Times today. Doesn't make the horse or the race any more or less interesting to me, but there it is for those who were curious.

Our buddy Walter out in Vegas sent along a message from an acquaintance of his that you might find more interesting:

This does not look good for BB waiting until Friday and put the acrylic patch on. I use to work with a vet at Hialeah Park, Calder and Gulfstream back in the day and have been around a lot of siutations and know a little about this and it is a negative sign. If the hoof was getting better and healing properly they would not hesitate to put the acrylic on as it would seal with the acrylic fiberglass and it would make it stronger. Once they put the patch on it is difficult to tell if there is any infection or problems. In my opinion that is why they are not putting the patch on as there is a lot of uncertainty about the crack.
The workout today was without a patch. Drape reported on The Rail yesterday that McKinlay actually wants to wait until race day to put on the patch; but Dutrow prefers Friday.
On Friday afternoon, he will take out the sutures, clean the hoof and put in a new set of sutures if necessary. He then will cover it up with the adhesive patch that seals in five minutes.

“The adhesive that we’ll rebuild that wall with is stronger than the hoof itself,” McKinlay said.
Nobody but the horse really knows what the deal is, though he didn't seem unhappy this morning. I keep thinking back to the case of Touch Gold, who had a worse problem than Big Brown, and who was kept on track to win the race, with help from McKinlay. My inclination is to ignore it....but it does add some intrigue to what otherwise seems a foregone conclusion.

3 Comments:

Anonymous said...

God speed, Big Brown.

Anonymous said...

I won't give big props to the NYT's for "uncovering" the big money with IEAH. The Daily Racing Form before the Derby already cited James Tagliaferri (and two others) as being major partners in for over $25M.

DRF May 3 'Wall Street makes a run for the money'

However in the above article it indicates Tagliaferri and Andy Cohen invested into IEAH later - not that either was the initial funder.

Tagliaferri's investment (and I belive Cohen is under this umbrella too) is actually Pegasus Holding Group Stables LLC. Then you have another big funder being Gary Tolchin, who is represented by his 'Golden Goose Enterprise LLC'.

Anonymous said...

Something is going on here -- more than meets the eye.