Leave the Light On Sidelined With Ankle Injury

An ankle injury suffered in his most recent workout has knocked Grade 2 winner Leave the Light On off the Triple Crown trail.

Trained by Chad Brown for Seth Klarman’s Klaravich Stable and William H. Lawrence, Leave the Light On will have surgery next week at the Rood and Riddle Equine Clinic in Kentucky.

The sophomore son of Horse Greeley had been training steadily at Palm Meadows, Gulfstream Park’s satellite training facility in Palm Beach County, including a five-furlong breeze in 1:00.90 on Sunday. He was being pointed to the $400,000 Besilu Stables Fountain of Youth (G2) on February 21 at Gulfstream for his 3-year-old debut.

“Leave the Light On emerged from his latest workout with an injury to his right hind ankle. It requires surgery and that’s probably going to put him on the shelf for a couple months,” Brown said. “It’s terrible news for all of us associated with the horse. To already have 10 points in the bank, it really stings.

“We always put the horse first and, thankfully, this is not only not life-threatening, it’s not even career-threatening. It’s a situation where the timing is very unfortunate and you never want these horses to be injured, but this seems fixable. Hopefully, Leave the Light On will recover and be back in big races in the fall.”

Leave the Light On didn’t make his career debut until last fall, breaking his maiden in his second start and posting a front-running half-length victory in the 1 1/8-mile Remsen (G2) on November 29 at Aqueduct.

“There’s a lot of nice races out there and with our program, we always look at the big picture if possible,” Brown said. “We try to look at the whole career of the horse. Of course, our first choice was to go to the Derby. That’s the race we want to win and everyone wants to win, but not at the expense of the horse. If the horse needs to be stopped on and cleaned up, then that’s what we’re going to do. Hopefully he has a long, successful career in our barn.”

Brown said that he plans to run both Cay Dancer and Rosalind in the $150,000 Suwannee River (G3) on the undercard of the $500,000 Donn Handicap (G1) February 7 at Gulfstream.

Source: Gulfstream Park Communications