Big Brown Injured, Won't Skip Belmont

Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Big Brown has developed a quarter crack on the inside of his front left hoof but is still being pointed toward the Belmont Stakes on June 7, trainer Richard Dutrow Jr. said yesterday.

The 3-year-old colt, plagued by front hoof problems early in his career, is attempting to become the first winner of racing's Triple Crown in 30 years.

"We didn't know until Saturday that it was a quarter crack," said Dutrow, who discovered the problem Friday. "It scares us this happened, but this has nothing to do with his ability to finish what he started.

"He's been as aggressive as I've seen him. He's really been rank in the afternoon."

A quarter crack is a crack in the hoof that begins at the coronary band -- the uppermost region of the hoof -- and works its way down, according to Nick Meittinis, a veterinarian based at Pimlico Race Course.

"It's like if you split your fingernail, and it goes down to the quick," said Meittinis, who has not examined Big Brown himself. "It could get him scratched [from the Belmont]. Quarter cracks are typically very painful to a horse. It's like you ripped your fingernail off. It hurts like crazy."

Big Brown is being treated at Belmont Park by Ian McKinlay, a hoof expert with a Canadian company called Tenderhoof Solutions. McKinlay said he is treating the crack, which is about five-eighths of an inch, with iodine, to prevent infection, and alcohol, which dries up the tissue. He plans to patch the crack tomorrow with steel wires and mesh, if no infection is found.

Quarter cracks are caused by hard pounding on the track, thin hoof walls or poor conformation. Big Brown suffered a quarter crack and hoof separation on his inner right front hoof last fall and was treated by McKinlay. The horse then suffered a similar injury in December to his inner left front hoof. Big Brown, who is undefeated in five starts, did not race between his debut Sept. 3 and March 5.

"This injury is nothing remotely close to the two foot injuries he had last fall and winter," McKinlay told Blood-Horse, an industry publication. "Those were wall separations and were very tender. This is just a straight quarter crack that will pretty much heal by itself. We didn't even trim him; the iodine will seep underneath the wall and start speeding up the healing. On Monday, we'll use a grinder [which removes dead tissue] to see how far it runs. Then we'll put a set of wires in and patch it up."

Big Brown became the first winner of the Kentucky Derby to race with glue-on shoes -- called Yasha shoes -- rather than nailed-in metal shoes. McKinlay replaced the glue-on shoes with a new pair two days before Big Brown won the Preakness.

McKinlay recently posted a video about quarter cracks on the Tenderhoof Solutions Web site and said hoof injuries were cropping up at Belmont Park far more than in the past.

"The tracks [at] Belmont have definitely firmed up; I could tell that from the type of injuries I'm getting," McKinlay said in the video. "When I started at Belmont in '85, very rarely would you get a wall separation. . . . In the last four or five years, you just get more and more of them. This year, 2008, I'm probably running a 30 percent increase of wall separation."