(Jay Town/Racing Photos)
The trouble appeared on October 10, 2020. The gates opened for Randwick’s Silver Eagle, and Alligator Blood, naturally the short-priced favourite, dipped alarmingly before hauling himself up again. He still managed second, but his Golden Eagle performance three weeks later was abject – 15th of 18. Granted, it was a bog track, but his fade-out when asked for his usual effort rang alarm bells. “He’d lost his desire,” said part-owner Jeff Simpson, a man with an eye for a horse honed through trotters and thoroughbreds. “The way he dropped out, I thought something had to be wrong.” Simpson and his fellow owners sent their beloved “Al” to the University of Queensland Equine Specialist Hospital at Gatton. Their suspicions were confirmed when nuclear scintigraphy scans revealed the horse was plagued by impinging spinous processes. Thankfully for most of us, there’s a more common term – kissing spines. Bones along the top of the spine (dorsal spinous processes) have grown too close and are squeezing forcefully together. University of Queensland Gatton Professor of Surgery and Sports Medicine Ben Ahern says it occurs in around one third of all thoroughbreds. Many cases cause a horse no problems, but for some it brings acute pain when asked to flatten out under pressure. “To compensate, he was putting pressure on himself in other areas,” Simpson said. “His stride became terrible. He’d started hitting his legs into each other. We don’t know when it started, but it was growing worse.”
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