Saturday, the final leg of the Triple Crown will be run, but it will be without a star attraction. Canadian-owned Thoroughbred “I’ll Have Another” was on the brink of becoming the first Triple Crown winner in over thirty years. However, instead of taking the biggest stage of all, the horse all of Canada got behind took a curtain call Friday morning.
"So I'm afraid the history is going to have to wait for another day,” announced the horse’s owner J. Paul Reddam.
“I’ll Have Another” was a horse chasing history. After winning the first two legs of the Triple Crown, it had a run at the record books in its sights. Instead the dream came to an early end.
“I can't even imagine,” says Dr. Steve Smith. “You'd never recover. It would be like losing a loved one.”
"It's been an incredible ride, an incredible run," trainer Doug O'Neill says. "It's a bummer. It's not tragic, but it's a huge disappointment."
Friday, “I’ll Have Another” retired after suffering a tendon injury. O’Neill says the swollen left front tendon was the beginning of tendinitis, which could have taken six months to treat, and so the popular horse was retired.
It’s a tough blow for the entire team. The champion Thoroughbred has been trained, preened and conditioned by a group of professionals including a trainer, owner, jockey, and even a horse chiropractor.
That chiropractor – or horse-positionalist, as it’s known – is from Stettler, Alberta.
In Alberta, the racing community is reeling from the news.
“Devastating,” says Lianne Knechtel at Northlands Park. “We all sort of went, oh no!"
“I’ll Have Another” has many Canadian connections. He’s Canadian-owned, his jockey trained in Vancouver and hopes to become a Canadian citizen. He even has a horse chiropractor who hails from central Alberta who was in New York working on “I’ll Have Another” going into the big race.
For the first time in a long time, horse racing was in the spotlight. “I’ll Have Another” had captured Canadians’ hearts and imaginations. The timing of the injury could not be worse, but those in the industry say while rare, it does happen.
“Every day you look at your horses and hope that everything is okay,” says Mitch Klimove, a race horse owner here in Alberta.
"It is a relatively minor injury but if he were to race and take a bad step it could develop into a severe injury. So they don't want to take that risk both for the safety of the horse and the rider."
Now, the team’s attention is focused on the future. For some, like jockey Jorge Espitia, that means supporting his close friend who was supposed to ride “I’ll Have Another” in the biggest race of his life.
“It's just hard. It's hard when you're one step away from making history, you know?”
The horse himself will now try out a new career path – in the breeding barn.
“Oh absolutely,” agrees Knechtel. “Yeah, he might be a pretty happy boy.”
With files from Ross Neitz
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