Sometimes it’s hard to know if Michael Matz is contemplating the question just asked or waiting for you to ask a different one. Just when you think you’ve asked one too many, he speaks: “It’s not so much sinking in that I won the Derby, but more that I lost a good horse. That’s what is sinking in.”
For all of us, Michael, for all of us.

Matz manned the Barbaro ship for 13 glorious months—for six flawless starts, for an impossibly impressive Ken­tucky Derby victory, for two dynamic weeks leading up to the Preakness when the Triple Crown seemed like a foregone conclusion and all the world was young. And then in one misstep, one twist, one something, Matz was merely a spectator. The horse belonged to veterinarians, surgeons, miracle workers. And there were oh so many questions.

Bred and owned by Roy and Gretchen Jackson’s Lael Stables, Barbaro turned a wide-open Kentucky Derby into a farce, powering to a six and a half-length score while jockey Edgar Prado did nothing more than wave his whip.

Two weeks later, sent off at 1-2 in the Preakness, Barbaro broke through the starting gate and had to be reloaded. The second time out of the gate, he had gone less than a sixteenth of a mile when Prado stood up in his stirrups, with Barbaro wobbling and bobbling to the outside fence, just past the wire, his right hind leg nothing but a hanging appendage. Prado jumped off, Barbaro squirmed in desperation, assistant trainer Peter Brette ran down the race track, the record crowd of 118,402 finally understood what was happening and the life was sucked out of the 2006 Triple Crown.

Darley Stable’s Bernardini and jockey Javier Castellano won the Preakness, not that anybody noticed.

The ride was over. So trite to have wanted—needed—a Triple Crown winner. As if it mattered. The Preakness, with its two-week turnaround and shorter distance, was supposed to be the hard one for Barbaro, the one that had people saying, “If he can get past the Preak­ness. . .”

Little did we know how ac­cur­ate that statement would be.
After Prado’s red saddle was removed, Barbaro hobbled onto a horse ambulance under the care of Matz, Brette and the track veterinarians. A man’s voice reverberated from the crowd: “Good luck, Barbaro.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “You’re going to need it, buddy.”

A crowd soon hovered around the stakes barn—reporters feeling more like burglars than writers, horsemen feeling more like accomplices than partners—while Dr. Dan Dreyfuss, Dr. Nick Meittinis and Dr. Scott Palmer tried to keep the horse composed while simultaneously attempting to diagnose the injury.

Three breaks: a condylar fracture of the cannon bone, a break in the ankle joint and a comminuted (shattered) first phalanx pastern bone. The condylar fracture came first, the rest a chain reaction to the first piston out of place.

Every vet on the scene was certain of one thing—call Dean Richardson, chief of surgery at the George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center. If surgery can be attempted, he’s the only guy.

Michelle Matz (Michael’s daughter, who works for him at Fair Hill Training Center) walked out of the stakes barn and was quickly surrounded by reporters, none brave enough to ask a thing. Writers, always sniffing for something, could say only that they were sorry.

“It’s not good,” she said in disbelief. “It’s not good.”
Maryland State Police readied to escort Barbaro to New Bolton, technically in Ken­nett Square, Pa., but more in Union­ville—horse country, home of the Matzes and the Jacksons.

Matz and Brette hopped into Brette’s BMW SUV and followed the horse van out of the Pimlico stable area at 7:22 p.m. The crowd, once jubilant, now dejected, evacuated Pimlico while the van bumped along the track’s wood-chip path, the same one Barbaro had walked like a rock star less than two hours earlier.
“Well, here we go again,” Matz had said to the Jacksons then. “I’d sure like to do this every year.”

It seemed so long ago.
Lights flashing, the caravan, including the white van with a red cross, made a right on Northern Parkway, as imbibers staggered into the median strip and onto the road’s shoulder. Then onto Interstate 83 north and the Baltimore Belt­way before entering I-95, passing under crowds standing on overpasses all the way from Baltimore to Port Deposit, Md.

Under Route 155, just before the Susquehanna River, the Valentin family braced from the wind gusts of passing cars to hold a hand-written sign in black magic marker that read “God Bless Barbaro.” The family had sat down to watch the race and, like all viewers, they had seen the impossible. It’s strange what human nature will make you do.

The Valentins dug around for a piece of poster board, found a pen, scrawled a message and climbed into their Honda minivan, the one with the “Havre de Grace Little League” and “God Bless the Troops” magnets on the back. Then they drove to the closest overpass.

Joshua, 8, and Nickolas, 6, held the sign while their mother, Elaine, stood behind them looking down on to I-95. Isa­bella Valentin, 10 months, slept in the back on their minivan.
“This is big horse country,” Elaine noted. “I grew up around horses and have a real soft spot for them. When they said it’s going to be a race to save his life, that hits close to home. We didn’t know what else to do; we just felt like we needed to come out.”
Joshua and Nickolas had already prayed.

Barbaro arrived at New Bolton just after 9 p.m. and was settled into a stall. Richardson had been summoned and would arrive the next day. The press set up in New Bolton’s lobby. The local community hung signs on the white fence at the center’s entrance. Surgery was scheduled for 1 p.m. Sunday.

It became part vigil, part stakeout.
Flights were booked, canceled and booked again, all with a certain pall hanging over the proceedings.

“Of course, it could all be academic,” one writer told her editor, “if he. . . if he doesn’t make it.”

Dunkin’ Donuts boxes were replaced with Domino’s Pizza boxes. Sixteen pizzas were devoured in minutes. Sunday papers, from the Philadelphia Inquirer to the New York Times, sat in piles. Mobile phones charged up in the few open sockets available. Laptop computers hung off desks or sat on the floor, all with stories in limbo. A publication entitled “On Any Given Day—a Day in the Life of New Bolton Center” sat on a counter.
Red roses, flower arrangements with a card for “Barbaro Jackson” and another one addressed to “Barbara Jackson.” Yeah, “Barbara.” The florist obviously wasn’t watching the Preakness. The Coke machine worked overtime.

Baseball updates flowed in: The Phillies led the Red Sox. Fox 29, News 10, 2 Action News and Storm Tracker 6 vans idled in the parking lot. “This horse has been in surgery for seven hours” was repeatedly uttered in exasperation. It felt like waiting around for someone to die.

The walls of the lobby denoted the roster of New Bolton’s donors—some with con­nections to Matz and Bar­baro—their names in steel: Mrs. Helen K. Groves, Ms. Helen Alexander, Kleberg Foun­dation, Mrs. J. Maxwell Moran, Mr. and Mrs. F. Eugene Dixon Jr.

At 8:55 p.m. on Sunday, Matz and Richardson appeared in the hallway leading to the lobby. Laughing. In a seven-hour procedure—prep, anesthesia, surgery, recovery—Richardson and a team of assistants had inserted a compression plate and 27 screws into Barbaro’s right hind leg.

Richardson and Matz spoke to the press. Cameras clicked, as reporters spoke over each other trying to get their questions answered. Matz’s steely blue eyes were glass. He stared blankly into the crowd—get him a ticket out of here, anywhere but here—talking about his horse who was in a recovery stall, trying to shake off the haze of seven hours of anesthesia, 27 hours of stress and one bad step.

Richardson was deadly serious but punchy after piecing together a jigsaw puzzle inside a horse’s leg. It was five words, one phrase, that got us.

“He’s still a coin toss,” Richardson said. “The surgery was very, very difficult. We were able to get the appropriate metal implants in the leg to hopefully fuse his fetlock joint and stabilize the limb to the point where he’ll be able to be salvaged as a stallion. The most important thing to emphasize, before anybody asks the question, is this is just the absolute first step in any case like this.”

The plate runs from Barbaro’s cannon bone through his ankle and into the pastern; the leg hasn’t fused—that will take months. The colt is comfortable but still a long way from home.

As Matz left the building, he was asked about his gut instinct. “I don’t know,” the trainer said as he walked to his silver Volvo in an empty parking lot behind New Bolton. “I sure was happier when I saw him standing there.”

Barbaro survived the surgery. That’s good. He survived the waking-up process after surgery. That’s good. He made it through the first night after surgery. That’s good. He made it through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after surgery. That’s good. They say it’s three to seven days after the surgery when infection is at its most dangerous.

As this story is written, it’s five days since the Preakness, four days since the surgery. Barbaro, cast from foot to hock, resides in a 12-by-13 stall at New Bolton.
Traditionally, this magazine’s Preakness story can prove daunting because so much can change between the time it goes to press and the time it is read.

In past years it has been a five-week wrestling match inside a four-page article. Smarty Jones, Funny Cide could be Triple Crown winners, or they could continue the thirst. Giacomo could pull rank in the Belmont, or Afleet Alex could make two-thirds of the Triple Crown his. If we were only so lucky this time.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This year had it all: an undefeated local horse who was fresh, sound and bred for the Triple Crown distances, trained by a former Olympian living in Chester County, Pa., ridden by a respected future Hall of Famer whose career took off in Maryland, and owned by a Pennsylvania couple with a learned respect for horses and game.

This was the Mid-Atlantic’s Triple Crown.
In a sport that incubates jealousy, envy and rumors, the Kentucky Derby was the least-begrudged victory in history. Barbaro, Brother Derek and Lawyer Ron entered the Derby with a combined winning streak of 15 races. Maryland-based Sweetnorthernsaint, owned by Marylanders Joseph Balsamo and Ted Theos and trained by Mike Trombetta, went off a tepid 5.50-1 favorite. Leaving the backside, Barbaro nailed down what, a minute earlier, had appeared to be an open Derby.

“I must have run the race 50 times the night before,” Matz said of the Derby. “What if he gets caught here, what if he . . . this race was exactly like all his other races—he gets himself where he wants to be and then finishes. You know how many times you plan on doing something and it doesn’t work. He never wavered at all in his training. He’s done everything right so far. You don’t know how good he is. Maybe we haven’t seen the best of this horse yet.”

Barbaro made his debut this past fall at Delaware Park, easily winning a one-mile turf race. Next came the Laurel Futurity at Laurel Park, again on the turf, in which Barbaro drew off to win by eight lengths. On New Year’s Day at Calder Race Course, he economically won the Tropical Park Derby-G3, again on the grass. After three turf starts, Matz still believed the son of Dynaformer could run on the dirt.

“He’s pretty nice,” Matz said after the Laurel Futurity. “At least he’s shown us all the time that he wants to be a nice horse. I had his older brother, Holy Ground [by Saint Ballado]. Everybody liked this horse from the start. He’s a big, strong colt and he’s done everything we’ve asked. His mother [La Ville Rouge, by Carson City] ran on the dirt, and Holy Ground could run on turf or dirt. He’s always worked well on the dirt, and we’re going to try him sometime, that’s for sure.”

Matz waited until February 4 for that moment, and Barbaro took the Grade 3 Holy Bull Stakes over a sloppy track at Gulfstream Park. Matz continued working on his slowly filling canvas, waiting until April 1 for the Florida Derby-G1, which Barbaro won for his fifth straight victory.
Shipped to Keeneland to prepare for the Kentucky Derby, Barbaro trained like a soldier: head down, bowling through gallops over the training strip’s Polytrack surface, bouncing off the track like a child at recess.

Former jockey Brette continued to be awed by the best he had ever sat on, as morning exercises turned into show-and-tell sessions.

“Boy, he’s got some jog,” a fan noted one morning.
“Ha, you should feel his gallop,” Brette said on his way off the track.
Shipped to Churchill Downs, Barbaro continued to train with a perfect combination of aggression and aplomb. No horse prepped better than he did leading up to the Derby, and it showed in his six-and-a-half-length victory in the mile and a quarter classic.

As always, Barbaro found a perfect spot to become the eye of the storm—remember, the Derby accepts 20 runners. Barbaro percolated in fourth while Sweetnorthernsaint made an audacious middle move; Brother Derek got shuffled and bounced around while caught wide; Lawyer Ron ran flat; and the rest proved to be overmatched. Barbaro drew off from runner-up Bluegrass Cat to finish in 2:01.36.

After the race, as Barbaro headed to the test barn under chants of “still undefeated” from the Churchill crowd, Brette was still in awe: “You get some horses that are just freaks. He’s not just a freak. He’s made in all the right ways. He’s become a professional now.
“When he breezed on Sat­ur­day, I pulled up and said, ‘Michael, this will win the Derby.’ It felt as though I went down that stretch in three strides. He’s so, so talented. So talented. And the best is yet to come.”

Matz and Barbaro returned home, shining some Triple Crown light on Fair Hill. An intersection that fills with commuter traffic twice a day, the village (far too small to be called a town) includes a once-a-year race course, a county fairgrounds, a 5,600-acre park, daily trail rides and more deer than at the North Pole. And horses. Since the 1930s, Fair Hill has included Thoroughbreds, but this was different.

Fair Hill Training Center, in business since the early 1980s but largely ignored beyond a core group of loyalists, became an attraction. Each day they came to see Barbaro.
Helicopters circled above the tranquility. Reporters asked for directions at Prizzio’s, the nearby—only—deli. The local paper published racing stories each day. Middle schoolers skipped first block to see morning workouts. Cameras buzzed and whirred. Stargazers walked down the center aisle of Matz’s barn wanting to see “Bar Barrow.”

For Matz, 55, it all amounted to another spotlight on a life that’s already had so many. The three-time Olympian won a team silver medal at the 1996 games in Atlanta and carried the American flag during the closing ceremonies.

Eight years ago Matz began to train race horses. He and his wife, D.D., started with three horses at Delaware Park, while Matz split time between that track and his farm in Collegeville, Pa. Matz gradually built up a viable stable, even winning the 2004 Arlington Million-G1 with Kicken Kris, but it was only when Barbaro walked into his barn that the evolution from Olympic show rider to Thoroughbred horse trainer was complete.

“He’s the type of horse that people want to see do well,” Matz said three days after the Derby. “I’m not saying he’s Secretariat, but maybe he is. He can get compared to horses like Secretariat, Seattle Slew, the great horses of our era. That’s the fun part. I’m looking forward to the Preakness; if we get past the Preakness, the Belmont, I think this horse can win the Triple Crown. I think the public is looking for somebody to do that and I hope he’s the one.”

Instead, it was Sunday night at New Bolton, and Matz was in a fog. Dr. Richardson tried to explain the ramifications of laminitis, infection, bone fusion, bringing a horse out of anesthesia, changing the cast. He answered questions about the breed, about Barbaro’s trainer, about preexisting conditions, about the horse’s future.

“Things right now are good, but I’ve been doing this too long to know that day one is not the end of things,” Richardson emphasized. “The long pastern bone was probably in 20-plus pieces, if you were to count them all up. This particular combination of injuries, I have not personally done [the surgery]. I’ve done all the permutations of the individual injuries, but this particular combination of injuries, most people don’t give the horse a chance.”
So that’s what this trip had become—a medical journal chance at saving a horse’s life, rather than a chance at winning the Triple Crown. Three days after the Preakness, Matz was still wrestling with this notion. Here’s a horse who had required only minimal veterinary treatment throughout his career, who had never lost a race until breaking down in the Preakness.

“He never had a bad work,” Matz said. “He never had anything wrong. I don’t remember him ever being lame. This horse was so strong; it’s unbelievable how strong he was. Every picture we saw of him, all four legs were off the ground, the power was just. . . there was no telling how good this horse could have been. He was a trainer’s dream. He just wanted to do it.”

Then Matz took another one of those long pauses where you’re not sure if he’s going to keep talking or he’s waiting for you. “I’m better when I don’t talk about him,” the trainer eventually continued. “When I just go and try to look for another one but I know there isn’t going to be another one, maybe ever, as good as he was. It was waiting for this race, waiting for this race and then it’s over in 30 seconds. You don’t realize what you had until you don’t have it any more. Maybe you’ll never get it again. I just thought, for sure, he was going to win the Triple Crown.”

Updates on Barbaro’s condition can be found on the University of Penn­sylvania’s Web site at www.vet.upenn.edu.