Barbaro

This is why they have to put horses down:

... fractures above and below the ankle -- a career-ending and life-threatening injury. Leg injuries to horses are especially dangerous, because they cannot lie down for extended periods of time to take pressure off their limbs.


And with Barbaro, a doctor on ESPN said tonight that a human with a similar fracture would have to be kept in bed for six weeks, at least, before rehab. This incredible horse is not going to make it. I hate this. A stupid pebble probably caught in his right-front shoe and the horse may have tried to shake it out, putting too much weight on that now-destroyed hind leg.

And this is terrific writing:
http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/horse/triplecrown06/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=2452359

And to continue the series of paragraphs beginning with "and," you by now know the story about Barbaro's trainer, Mike Matz, who is perhaps one of the most famous plane crash survivors in recent history, given that he survived the Sioux City, Iowa, (that state again) plane disaster (one of the most famously videotaped crashes in history so far), and then rushed back into the wreckage to rescue two children.

I was very much caught up in this story, pre-Derby, so I am just broken up about this spectacular, now-about-to-be-dead horse. And what is this going to do, psychologically, to this jockey, Edgar Prado?

Thank you for your time.