Nothing like a potential feel good story of the year that you know is going to, at the same time, rile people up. Get a load of this tale of redemption…
On April 4, 2008, thoroughbred Freedom’s Flight’s career came to an all-to-familiar halt when his leg snapped on the track at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, FL. Actually, it wasn’t a halt so to speak, he still went on to finish third in the race. After the expensive treatment to repair the injury failed, owners sold off the racehorse for a mere $500.
From MiamiHerald.com:
“They told me his racing career was over,” said [Herman] Heinlein, who owns 100 horses. He faced a choice: pay to euthanize Freedom’s Flight or, as Pinchin suggested, give him to Marian Brill, a 44-year veteran of Florida racing and a horse rescuer.
To a racehorse owner, an animal that can’t run “is a broken machine that don’t work,” Brill said. “They get rid of it.”
Heinlein says he kept title to the horse “because I didn’t want somebody to get him back to racing.”
Still a stallion, Freedom’s Flight could have undergone expensive treatment for his leg then become a breeder, but “he never proved himself as a racehorse,” said Brill, and since his famous ancestors begat hundreds of offspring, “Why breed the one that’s farther down the line?”
Brill, 58, said she “started rehabbing him” but his injuries were too daunting. Then, she said, a man whose name she didn’t know bought him for $500.
“They loaded him on a trailer and left,” she said.
According to the Herald, several months later, FF was spotted by the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Agricultural Patrol Unit tied to a tree on a “garbage feeder farm” – which is exactly what it sounds like, a farm that they cook garbage and feed it to swine. His price tag at the time had been $100.
The owner of the farm, Manuel Coto, allowed an SPCA vet to treat Freedom’s Flight for multiple ailments including “severe “rain rot,” which made him lose most of his hair, bites, wounds, severe rashes, abscesses under his hooves, detoxing from steroids, a fractured right cannon — shin — bone, and strangles, a potentially deadly, highly contagious bacterial infection.”
So far it reads like Seabiscuit, from the twisted mind of director Rob Zombie. If you’ll further indulge me, I promise it gets better.
While nursing the horse back to health, they discovered a tattoo under Freedom’s Flight’s lip that read: I35289. The Jockey Club thoroughbred registry indicated that the number revealed that he was the scion of, count em’, two Triple Crown winners: Seattle Slew, his grandpa and winner of the Triple Crown in 1977, and the legend himself, Secratariat, Freedom’s Flight’s dad.
Since the famous bloodline discovery, Freedom’s Flight has received $30,000 in vet care, and is the front runner to play Secratariat in a Disney movie. I’m hoping for a sci-fi drama – lots of scions, siars, members of the brood, prophesies being fulfilled, etc. etc.
(photos via spca-sofla.org)
Racehorse’s health restored 1 year after hellish descent (Miami Herald)
