Barbaro's Birthplace
Near Lexington, Kentucky
On a Kentucky farm near here, before dawn on the twenty-ninth of April, two thousand three, a bay colt named Barbaro was born. Bred by Roy and Gretchen Jackson and trained by Michael Matz, he came into the two thousand six Kentucky Derby undefeated. With Edgar Prado in the saddle, he surged through the final turn and won by six and a half lengths, the largest Derby margin in sixty years, and became only the sixth unbeaten horse ever to take the race.
Two weeks later, at the Preakness, the dream broke apart. Just past the start, Barbaro shattered three bones in his right hind leg. Surgeons at Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center fought for months to save him, drawing thousands of get-well letters from strangers, but he developed laminitis and was euthanized in January of two thousand seven.
He is remembered simply as America's horse.
