Doug O’Neill trains I’ll Have Another, who was scratched yesterday from the Belmont Stakes, ending his bid for the Triple Crown. This week, O’Neill has shared his thoughts with Post readers. As told to Kevin Fasick.
It’s a bummer, it’s a real bummer. It’s not tragic. It’s not the end of the world by any means. I really feel for the Reddams, I’ll Have Another’s owners. I feel for the horse.
We have said all along if he wasn’t a hundred percent he wasn’t going to run. He galloped great Thursday and then in the afternoon when we walked the shed row, we noticed something.
I’m a pretty optimistic guy, so I hoped and prayed he might just have a little infection, a little skin irritation. We got there yesterday morning and his leg looked great, so I thought my prayers were answered.
He trained great yesterday morning. And then after he cooled out, he cooled out well, we noticed a little loss of definition that was still in that left front leg. So we called the owner, called the veteran, we did some diagnostics on him, saw the beginning of some tendinitis in his left superficial flexor tendon, and we made a decision. The consensus was, retire him.
I’ll Have Another is going to have a great future. He’s retiring sound, he’s retiring on top and I would imagine there will be a lot of really top farms looking into having him staying at their place and he will be breeding a lot of top mares next year.
He has given us just an unbelievable joy ride here the whole year. I’m sure as I get some quiet moments, I’m going to think maybe certain things led to it, but it’s just a freak injury and we were so blessed we were injury free all year. This came at a horrible time.
People who will say this has anything to do with drugs are idiots. I respect everyone but, yeah, that’s just a very silly comment.
I certainly wanted to bring a Triple Crown to the industry, but we’ve been saying all along it’s all about the horse.
I am convinced if he had stayed injury free we would have won. But that’s all just kind of talk.
Triple Crown, Triple Crown, O’Neill, Doug O’Neill, Belmont Stakes
No comments:
Post a Comment