Shattered Hopes

The man is no dreamer, yet dreams chased him just the same. Thoroughbred trainer Michael Matz, 55, sat in his office at a pastoral training center in rural northern Maryland four days before the Preakness, surrounded by knotty-pine walls and totems of his four decades among horses. On one wall was a watercolor of Matz astride Jet Run, the best show jumper he ever rode, the one who missed the 1980 Olympics because of the U.S. boycott. On another wall was a photo of Camella, a filly who gave Matz his first stakes win after he turned to training racehorses in 1997, strengthening his faith that he could succeed in a tough game. � And above the couch was a collage of the dark-bay 3-year-old Barbaro, the best of them all. It was formed from pictures taken on April 1, when he won the Florida Derby. Five weeks later Barbaro would so dominate the Kentucky Derby in a 6 1/2-length victory that talk of his winning the Triple Crown rose before darkness fell on Churchill Downs. It grew only louder as last Saturday's Preakness approached. This would be the horse to end the long drought since Affirmed won the Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes in 1978. � "If we can just get past this weekend and have a chance at the Triple Crown," said Matz, "it would be so exciting." Then he stopped. He pursed his thin lips and blinked his light-blue eyes, as if summoning a horseman's innate defenses against optimism. "I hate to get my hopes up so much," he said, "because in two minutes it could be out the window."

It took far less time than that. Barbaro ran only about 15 seconds of the 131st Preakness at Pimlico Race Course before being pulled up with three fractures and a dislocation in his right hind leg. He is finished as a racehorse, but surgery on Sunday might have saved his life. During a procedure lasting more than five hours at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pa., veterinary surgeon Dean Richardson inserted a plate and 23 screws into Barbaro's lower leg while fusing the ankle joint into a stable mass of inflexible bone.

It was, said Richardson, a collection of damage--including a long pastern bone shattered into more than 20 pieces--that he had never seen before. Nevertheless, late on Sunday, Barbaro, his leg in a cast, walked into a 14-by-14-foot recovery stall and began eating hay. But, as Richardson cautioned, "this is only the first step. Even after everything went well, to be brutally honest, he's still a coin toss [for survival]."

Early on Sunday, Matz had gone to Fair Hill to check on his horses. It is what a trainer does every day before dawn. Yet this time it was different. "It was pretty hard walking by Barbaro's stall," Matz said, "and seeing nobody in there. I feel better that we've at least made an effort to save his life."

Barbaro's survival would hold significance beyond the emotional. According to Gretchen Jackson, who owns Barbaro with her husband, Roy, after the Derby "13 or 14" breeding farms had shown interest in standing Barbaro as a stallion upon his retirement. Had he won the Preakness, his syndication price probably would have approached $40 million. The Jacksons do not want for money, but they had grown attached to Barbaro. In a far less lucrative--but more poignant--deal the Jacksons had also begun negotiations to market Barbaro-themed merchandise ("We'll donate everything to charity," Gretchen said before the Preakness), a measure of the connection the public makes with a horse who runs bravely and fast.

Horse racing will bear the larger emotional scars of Barbaro's breakdown. In brilliant late-afternoon sunshine and a cool breeze, eight horses circled the track after the Derby winner stopped. Bernardini, making his fourth career start, won by 5 1/4 lengths. A Preakness-record crowd of 118,402, stoked for a middle-jewel victory and a send-off to the Belmont, instead sat in something resembling a stunned buzz. It was a sound that racing had heard before.

On July 6, 1975, the brilliant filly Ruffian broke her leg shortly after the start of a match race against Foolish Pleasure at Belmont Park. Fifteen years later another filly, 3-year-old Go for Wand, broke her leg while battling 6-year-old champion Bayakoa down the stretch in the Breeders' Cup Distaff, also at Belmont. Both horses were humanely destroyed because their injuries were too severe. In 1999 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Charismatic suffered a broken leg near the finish line in the Belmont, but the colt was saved.

Each incident was a setback for a sport that fights a losing battle for the attention of an entertainment-saturated public. Racing has served up rich tales in recent years: Funny Cide's Everyman owners, Smarty Jones's comeback from a near-fatal injury and Afleet Alex's run in memory of a young girl's heroic fight against cancer. They all reminded fans of the soul that lives in an ancient game. On Saturday there were only painful images to remember.

It had been a fortnight of promise since Barbaro's win in Louisville. Matz brought his colt from Churchill Downs to the solitude of the Fair Hill Training Center in Elkton, Md. "He's home, he's happy," assistant trainer Peter Brette said of Barbaro early in Preakness week. Two days before the race Matz sent Barbaro out for a quarter-mile workout, as if to remind the colt that he would soon be back in competition. "That was like turning on a switch," Matz said on Preakness day.

Last Friday the colt was vanned to Pimlico and lodged in stall 40 of the stakes barn, the traditional home of the Kentucky Derby winner. Three hours before the Preakness, Matz greeted a small group of visitors at the barn before hustling back to meet his family in the clubhouse. "I must have run the race 50 times in my head last night," Matz said as he left the barn. "I fell asleep pretty quickly, but I woke up thinking about it. Then I came here at five this morning and gave him a pretty good gallop, and boy, I'll tell you, now I think I know what scenario we're going to get." He was full of confidence, a professional in a dark-blue suit, on top of his game.