Cheltenham Sir Eric...poor horse

ROMANY 1959

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Had to have his shoe put back on at the start, then same leg, snapped while running to a fence . He is entire, I hope they can save him..but it looked so so bad
Poor horse and his owners
 

eggs

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It did indeed look horrible and he has been pts. He seemed to land fine and then take a bad stride. Feel very sorry for all of his connections.
 
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I know it can happen to any horse at any time but having spent 5 minutes as the main focus of the tv cameras whilst being reshod as well as being the favourite it really does leave a sour taste. Poor lad he was so calm and happy about everything before hand.

The only good outcome of this is that he will not have felt a thing. He will have been filled full of drugs straight away, assessed and dealt with within minutes. There is a huge team of vets at Cheltenham and with something like that there is very little discussion to be made sadly.
 

ROMANY 1959

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It was offside foreleg, mid cannon bone..he had a shoe put on at the start as he lost a plate. Been told that he had trouble with lameness on that leg a while ago.. possible there was a Weak point there
 

Follysmum

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Very sad! Im always torn when this happens but as said before there are lots of neglected animals that live an awful life.
Never easy to hear about any horse sport deaths
 

cundlegreen

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It was offside foreleg, mid cannon bone..he had a shoe put on at the start as he lost a plate. Been told that he had trouble with lameness on that leg a while ago.. possible there was a Weak point there
He had a stone bruise, and had been scanned and xrayed before travelling over to Cheltenham. They had done everything to get him there in good order then that happened.
 

JJS

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The more I hear of racing, the more I dislike it. I think it's simply unfair to ask so much of our equine partners, no matter how well we treat them, and the number of problems that ex-racehorses end up with in later life makes me more and more averse to a sport that insists on using babies. Flower must be a very similar age to the Thoroughbreds who will be backed this year, and she's so guileless and immature that it really drives home how young they are. Thoroughbreds are quite possibly the most beautiful and brave equines in existence, but the sport itself is one I'll never be able to support. Poor boy. Four is just no age at all :(

That said, I'm saddened for his connections nevertheless - I'm sure that there are people who loved him, and who must be feeling absolutely heartbroken this evening. Whether or not we share the same views on horse racing, losing them is still just as terrible and painful.
 

Ambers Echo

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Can anyone explain why a strong, young, fit horse should break a leg like that? Not in a fall or even landing over a fence. I am not having a go at racing - these horses are treated like kings and there are far worse ways to go - but I don;t understand horse breaking legs while just running on the flat. And it seems to happen a lot.
 

cundlegreen

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Can anyone explain why a strong, young, fit horse should break a leg like that? Not in a fall or even landing over a fence. I am not having a go at racing - these horses are treated like kings and there are far worse ways to go - but I don;t understand horse breaking legs while just running on the flat. And it seems to happen a lot.
I've known them do it in the field. My only thought was, he pulled the shoe off on that leg, so was something slightly wrong with his foot balance or action?
 
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The bones, joints, tendons, ligaments, muscles etc are all put under extreme pressure. No matter how much conditioning you do to them sometimes things do just break. You are putting half a tonne of animal on what is realistically a very small leg with almost 4 tonnes of pressure in a full galloping stride. Sometimes those limbs just cant take the pressure. Same as when they do a tendon or ligament - it cant cope with the pressure it is being put under and snaps.

The bones bend and condense ever so slightly when under the full weight of the horse in a gallop stride and if they break then they break out of shape. They can not be pieced back together. Like wheb you have a puzzle piece that you think should go there, it should fit but no matter which way you turn it it just quite simply doesnt fit the slot.
 

JJS

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Can anyone explain why a strong, young, fit horse should break a leg like that? Not in a fall or even landing over a fence. I am not having a go at racing - these horses are treated like kings and there are far worse ways to go - but I don;t understand horse breaking legs while just running on the flat. And it seems to happen a lot.

Exactly as EKW said. Sometimes strength is incidentally sacrificed for speed, and although this can be the case with any horse, I think Thoroughbreds seem particularly vulnerable to this type of injury. They simply move so fast and with so much power, and their legs are so incredibly slender, that they can't always withstand the pressure that's being put on them.
 

Mule

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Can anyone explain why a strong, young, fit horse should break a leg like that? Not in a fall or even landing over a fence. I am not having a go at racing - these horses are treated like kings and there are far worse ways to go - but I don;t understand horse breaking legs while just running on the flat. And it seems to happen a lot.
There's been a lot of research done in to these type of "bad step' injuries. It used to be thought it was just something that happened and there was no predicting it. However more recent research has shown that musculoskeletal breakdowns almost always happen in sites of prior injury. Basically, it's a case of micro fractures going undetected. Time isn't given for these minor injuries to heal and when the limb is repeatedly stressed it can snap.
 

cundlegreen

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There's been a lot of research done in to these type of "bad step' injuries. It used to be thought it was just something that happened and there was no predicting it. However more recent research has shown that musculoskeletal breakdowns almost always happen in sites of prior injury. Basically, it's a case of micro fractures going undetected. Time isn't given for these minor injuries to heal and when the limb is repeatedly stressed it can snap.
see my previous reply re xrays.
 

tristar

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a reason they break on the flat is in-coordination the sheer opposing pulling forces when taking a bad step at great speed can shatter bone
 

Mule

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see my previous reply re xrays.
Unfortunately micro-fractures tend not to be visible on x-rays. At any rate, I have no knowledge about why this individual horse broke down. I only know what the research in this area has found. It has a lot of relevance for endurance and eventing as well as racing.
 

Clodagh

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If you look at jumps horses from 20 years ago they look like middleweight hunters compared to todays. I do worry that we are sacrificing stregth for speed to a point where it is excessive.
As EKW has said, he won't have felt a thing, I badly broke my hand out hunting years ago, over a fence, and couldn't pull up straight away. Everything was flapping about but it didn't hurt.
 
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