Art Collector to miss Kentucky Derby 2020 with minor injury
Art Collector, expected to be the second choice in the Kentucky Derby, will miss the Sept. 5 race with a minor injury.
"It’s a minor deal, but it’s just enough to go, do we really want to run a race of this magnitude if he’s not 100%?" said owner Bruce Lunsford. "And you can’t really give him any medication until 48 hours out. And it’s just too long to wait. And we also had a case of (jockey Brian Hernandez Jr.) tested positive (for Covid-19), and so there was just so many things going wrong, it was like a sign, let’s just make the right move here and try to move in the Preakness."
Lunsford said the Bernardini colt "grabbed a quarter the other day when he was galloping. It didn’t look bad at first, it’s just enough — it’s tender, he’s got a little bit of ouch to him. We couldn’t really do anything to take the pain out of it temporarily. It’ll probably be fine in four or five days, but we’re too late to try to make that happen. If it would have happened two weeks ago, it probably wouldn’t have been an issue."
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Lunsford said he and trainer Tom Drury will aim for the Oct. 3 Preakness Stakes for Art Collector's next start.
"I don’t think there’s anything to hold us back, he’s doing good," Lunsford said. "Really, he’s been doing well, and we were very excited to run. It’s just, sometimes you’ve got to take what they give you. We had a three-race goal, and the three-race goal was the Blue Grass, which worked out great, the Derby and the Breeders’ Cup. So now we’ve got an alternative route, we’ll maybe go to the Preakness and then to the Breeders’ Cup."
Drury told Jennie Rees of the Kentucky HBPA: “He grabbed himself yesterday morning training. It was still very sensitive this morning. When I took my thumbs to palpate the bulbs of his heels, you could still tell it was pinching him. I had to make a choice. Your horse has to always come first. To run in a race of this caliber and trying to compete against the best 3-year-olds in this country, you’ve got to be 110 percent. To me, it wouldn’t have been fair to Art Collector, even though it’s slight, knowing that there’s an issue of any kind.
"I had a meeting yesterday afternoon with my veterinarians, Foster Northrup, Rick Costelle, had my blacksmith there. We discussed some different scenarios. We maybe could have put a bar shoe on it and stabilized it and he would have been fine. But you’re going to the Kentucky Derby. First and foremost, as the trainer, it’s my responsibility to be the voice for the horse. That’s just not fair to him (to run). He’s been too good to us, and we’re going to make sure he’s taken care of first.”
Art Collector came off the van and grazed briefly with Drury on the shank.
“I knew after we gave him a little anti-inflammatory this morning that he’d be perfectly sound,” he said. “That’s not surprising at all. And that’s what we wanted to see. We wanted to see him respond well to it, and it looks like that’s what happened. On to Baltimore.”