This past Saturday, September 15th, Rags to Riches lugged a bit in the homestretch as she placed by half a length behind Lear's Princess in the Gazelle Stakes. She cooled out fine, but the next morning was lame. She was x-rayed and they discovered sadly that she has a hairline fracture in her right front pastern. So, at 10:45am Monday, Rags left her trainer, Tom Pletcher's Belmont Park barn to travel to her dad's, John Magnier's Kentucky farm, the Ashford Stud near Versailles.She will undergo 6 weeks stall rest and then on November 1st be re-Xrayed to see if she can go into training again and race as a 4 year-old. Some feel that she received this injury in the Belmont when she stumbled out of the gate, but then went on to become the first filly to win in 102 years. Pletcher describes her as a competitive, macho, rambunctious young race horse, and he feels that she will race again. Though he admits that if she were a colt, she would retire now.
When asked when he suspected the injury was evident he replied, "How can you ever know? Sometimes you have horses that have some sort of injury and it never manifests or surfaces until they get into a race situation. No matter what you do training or how much galloping or breezing they do, there's a difference between running as fast as you can and not. But anytime you have a horse take a step like she did out of the gate in the Belmont, you always worry that somewhere down the road it can catch up with you."
Despite this injury and her inability to race in the Breeder's Cup in October, she is a virtual lock for Champion 3 year-old filly of the year. I think she should be the Eclipse Horse of the Year.
But whenever she received the injury, she's been sort of out of commission since the Belmont. She had two fevers, and her exercise rider, Lauren, pulled her up after a brief run recently because she felt "off." She was sent to the Bolton Center, but they could find absolutely nothing wrong with her, so she was put in the Gazelle Stakes.
I certainly hope this wonderful filly recovers well and doesn't drive herself too stir crazy while she's on stall rest! The following links post news about this Ashford Stud, the Kentucky division of Coolmore. Some of the movie Dreamer was filmed at this beautiful facility!
http://www.coolmore.com/stallions/america/
or
http://www.horse-races.net/library/farms06-ashford.htm
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashford_Stud
or
http://www.tbheritage.com/TurfHallmarks/Graves/cem/GraveMattersAshford.html
or
http://www.coolmore.com/
