Team Valor International's Animal Kingdom, who encountered trouble shortly after the start of the Belmont Stakes, has exited the race with an injury to his left hind leg
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Wednesday morning Dr. Dean Richardson of the New Bolton Research Center examined a nuclear scan, which indicated that something was amiss with the colt's left hock. Today both Dr. Richardson and Dr. Larry Bramlage of Rood & Riddle veterinary clinic in Lexington, Kentucky examined radiographs of the hock and discovered a small fissure on the tip of the cannon bone where it joins the lower part of the hock.
"It's not a major thing," said Dr. Bramlage. "I agree with Dr. Richardson that the best course of action is to keep the colt inactive for two weeks and radiograph the leg again. In two weeks it should settle down and he should be sound again. I don't think it is going to separate, but that would be the worry. Right now it is a tiny crack and technically you could call it a fracture. But I would characterize it as more of a fissure because of how small it is. He lit up pretty good on the nuclear scan. Normally, no matter how hard a horse hits his leg on the ground in an accident, there is not enough force to show this type of uptake on the scan for a period of at least 10 days. This tells me that, like a lot of racehorses, he probably had a little something going on in there that he was dealing with. But when he hit the ground with such force in the accident, he overloaded the bone and this is the result.
"The good news is that this should not cost him the entire season. I would hope that he would be able to return to training in a matter of weeks."
The Kentucky Derby winner and Preakness runner-up was observed by his trainer Graham Motion to be stiff the day following the race and was marginally lame for a couple of days in his left hand leg, which prompted sending him to the veterinary clinic in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
(Team Valor International)