You can’t legislate for what happened to him – if something had of shown up pre-race, he would have been taken out under vets advice. This type of incident could have just as easily happened had they run him in the Ryanair or even if he was galloping around in a paddock at home.
We had Latenightpass at the age of 13 running his final race in the Cross Country Chase where he finished 5th and although beaten some 22L for a long way he ran a great race – the 2nd and 3rd in the race were both 11 years old, indeed of the 14 runners only four were under the age of 10 and only two of them finished in the first 10 home.
Unfortunately no matter how many precautions you take or checks you put in place, cardio issues can strike from out of the blue and to some of the healthiest individuals for no reason at all.
To me a far more worrying/distressing sight came about at the end of the 4:50 3m Hunter Chase at Fakenham where of the four runners only one managed to finish but he was so absolutely legless that he tried to pull himself up on the ‘run’ to the last, and I say that in the loosest terms as he was barely at walking pace coming off the home turn and by the time he eventually got to the last, he literally (in stages) climbed over/through the fence and then proceeded to walk the length of the run in pass the line.
On officially good to soft ground the overall race time was just over one minute slow!