Animal Kingdom has stress fracture

By: SPORTS NETWORK

 

Hallandale Beach, FL (Sports Network) - The lameness that was discovered last Saturday in Animal Kingdom's left hind leg has been determined to be from a stress fracture. The colt underwent a scan on Tuesday at the Palm Beach Equine clinic.

Owned by Team Valor, Animal Kingdom came up lame after a workout Saturday morning at Palm Meadows Training Center, where he is stabled. The stress fracture is in the four-year-old's left hind ilium, but will not require surgery.

"The horse will stay in his stall for a month and be grazed every day, after which time he'll be transferred to Team Valor's barn at Fair Hill Training Center, where for the next couple of months he will have limited activity," said Team Valor CEO Barry Irwin. "Then he will return to full training. Team Valor's interest is to run the horse for another year. We will make a decision about whether we want to do that by September, so that if the horse is going to be retired, he'll have plenty of chance to be promoted by the start of breeding season. We should have a good enough idea by September of whether or not he is the same horse in his training. If he is, we prefer to run him another year and target the Dubai World Cup.

"If not, we will then begin talking with farms at home and abroad. We have received interest from multiple parties in Japan and the United States, as well as a serious breeder in England, but we have told all of them that we would not talk about it until the fall."

Trained by Graham Motion, Animal Kingdom suffered a hairline fracture of the hock in the same leg during the running of last year's Belmont Stakes. The new injury is not related to last year's problem.

The Eclipse Award winner made a successful comeback last month in an allowance race on turf at Gulfstream Park. The 2011 Kentucky Derby champ has career earnings of more than $1.96 million with four wins from eight starts.