Horse racing news from http://www.mercurynews.com/
ELKTON, Md. - Part of the morning ritual now at the Fair Hill Training Center: Shortly before 7 on Wednesday, Alex Brown, a veteran exercise rider at Fair Hill, on a 2-year-old filly named Chappaqua, headed back to the barn from the training track when he passed trainer Michael Matz on his pony.
From his horse, Brown asked the standard question: "Do you have the news from last night?"
"Everything's the same," Matz, who had already spoken to Barbaro's surgeon, told Brown. "It's good."
Within a few minutes of the brief exchange, Update No. 316 was posted at www.timwoolleyracing.com: "Another comfortable night last night for Barbaro (Tuesday night). Saw Michael Matz on the horse path as I was coming back to the barn and he gave me the good news."
By 7:35 a.m., a dozen comments were posted on the Web site, which originally had been set up for news about trainer Tim Woolley's small racing stable at Fair Hill, but turned into something else entirely after Barbaro's horrific accident at the May 20 Preakness Stakes. Brown's daily Barbaro blog is now a community unto itself, with an average of 10,000 to 12,000 daily visitors.
These messages immediately followed Update 316: "Hooray Barbaro! The miracle continues!" ... "Another blessed night you had." ... "Love you, big guy! If your cast is changed today, just hang out while Dr. R. does his magic." ... "Love those words - ANOTHER COMFORTABLE NIGHT!"
By 2 that afternoon, 298 messages had been left on the site. Some touched on anti-horse-slaughter legislation in Congress. Several were about the English jockey who head-butted his horse. Most were expressions of unbridled joy about the continued existence of the Kentucky Derby winner.
Brown, a 41-year-old Englishman who exercises seven or eight horses each morning at Fair Hill, and teaches Internet marketing at the University of Delaware, typically adds an afternoon update after speaking to Matz's assistant trainer, Peter Brette, or Fair Hill veterinarian Kathy Anderson. He posts the daily updates issued by the New Bolton Center and frequently links to media reports.
After developing laminitis in his uninjured left hind hoof several weeks ago - the site got about 16,000 visits the day that was announced - Barbaro still is far from out of the woods, so Brown makes a point of not speculating much in either a positive or negative direction. He used to post his morning updates from a computer at Fair Hill's clocking stand, but now he has a quicker system, usually calling a friend in Delaware who posts from her laptop.
"I always get a little stressed out until I've heard from Michael, because I know now that people are just sitting on their computer at 7 waiting for that update," Brown said. "If, for some reason, I don't meet Michael on the horse path, so let's say the update doesn't happen for another half hour or an hour, people get naturally concerned. `Well, he's not updated it - there must be a problem.' They don't recognize that the problem might be I just haven't seen Michael yet."
"He asks me every morning," Matz said later that morning at his barn, which is next to the barn where Woolley trains his horses. "I really didn't know how big it really was until we started getting letters."
For two years, pre-Barbaro, www.timwoolley.com got about a half-dozen hits a day. When Barbaro returned to Fair Hill as the Derby winner, Brown decided to do a daily blog before the Preakness.
"We got about 120 visits a day," Brown said. "I thought that was pretty cool."
After the Preakness, Brown put up a post about how "Fair Hill was completely devastated. ... I basically thought we were stopping. Who wants to exploit the situation?"
But people searching for information on Barbaro found the site. After Brown posted that Barbaro was in the recovery pool, "the site got 3,000 visits in an hour, and the site crashed."
Many of the visitors don't go to racetracks and really didn't follow Barbaro until the Preakness, but that wasn't the case for Vicki Jasch of Franklin, Tenn. Her uncle was a trainer of thoroughbreds in Maryland many years ago, she said, and she owns several quarterhorses and has experienced the pain that comes with serious injury. She was on Barbaro from the start. She saw his first race from Delaware Park, which blew her away.
"I thought he had a real shot at the Triple Crown. His injury really devastated me and hit me like somebody kicked me in the gut," Jasch said in an e-mail. "I have friends that say they want to go to New Bolton to see him. But I told them that they would have to dress like a carrot to get in."
Matz, who continues to stop at New Bolton daily, said he hasn't seen the Web site personally, but he still gets letters addressed to him or to the horse, so he knows the spirit of the messages.
"We've got a couple who were real bad situations, where people were just trying to get money out of the Jacksons," Matz said, referring to Barbaro's owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson. "But basically everybody's been real supportive and behind this horse."
Brown theorizes that Barbaro unfortunately may be more famous now than he would have been if he had gone on to win the Triple Crown.
"Even around the world - on Sunday, I found a news story in Scotland and one in New Zealand updating his condition," he said.
The regulars who visit www.timwoolleyracing.com already knew this. Brown noted it back in Update No. 302.
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