Barbaro Memorial Fund Created

The National Thoroughbred Racing Association announced this weekend that it has established the Barbaro Memorial Fund in honor of the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner that was euthanized last week after a long fight with laminitis.

Laminitis is a disease that involves the inflammation of a horse's hoof, causing the horse to founder, unable to walk or in severe cases so much as stand without great pain. Barbaro developed laminitis in his left rear hoof as a consequence of favoring that leg after breaking his right hind leg during the Preakness Stakes on May 20, 2006, just a few weeks after winning the Kentucky Derby.

Barbaro did not simply win the Derby, the undefeated thoroughbred had thoroughly dominated it. Jockeyed by Edgar Prado at 6:1 odds, Barbaro pulled out to an early lead and never looked back, winning by almost seven full lengths. Thoroughbred racing fans began to speculate that Barbaro might win the coveted Triple Crown -- adding victories at the 2006 Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes to that convincing Kentucky Derby performance.

It was not to be, however, as America watched Barbaro unexpectedly pull up lame in the early stages of the Preakness. The thoroughbred's right leg had broken in three places. Several months of surgery and intensive physical therapy followed. These included pain killers, a support sling, and a hoof wall resection procedure that surgically removed 80 percent of Barbaro's left rear hoof with the hope that the remaining 20 percent would generate healthy living tissue.

In the end the complications stemming from that bizarre and catastrophic injury were too much for the horse, his doctors, and the flood of support from horseracing fans across the world to overcome. Barbaro was euthanized on January 29, 2006.

The Barbaro Memorial Fund was established to raise the money needed to research a cure for laminitis. Donations will be funnelled into pre-existing equine charities, foremost among them the Pennsylvania-based Laminitis Fund.

Fund-raising drives for the Barbaro Memorial Fund will be held in conjunction with Triple Crown events, along with other major races, as well as through the sales of merchandise and television ads sponsored by the National Association of Thoroughbred Racing.

"The outpouring of emotion and support from racing fans has been so amazing," Alex Waldrop, chief executive of the National Association of Thoroughbred Racing commented. "We anticipate a busy few months as we work together to ... impact the health and safety of thoroughbreds and, through our focus on laminitis, horses of other breads as well."

Barbaro would have turned four years old on April 29, 2007.

Source: "US Racing Sets Up Barbaro Memorial Fund," Associated Press.