‘Grateful’ Connections Looking at Winter Campaign for El Areeb; Multiple G3 Winner Exits Wednesday Work at Laurel with Knee Injury
‘Grateful’ Connections Looking at Winter Campaign for El Areeb; Multiple G3 Winner Exits Wednesday Work at Laurel with Knee Injury
Multiple G3 Winner Exits Wednesday Work at Laurel with Knee Injury
LAUREL, MD – Rather than looking back or thinking about what could have been, trainer Cal Lynch was focused on the future following the discovery of an injury to his stable star, M M G Stables’ multiple Grade 3 winner El Areeb, Thursday morning.
X-rays taken on El Areeb, one of the leading Triple Crown contenders in the East off wins in the Jerome (G3) and Withers (G3) at Aqueduct this winter, showed he exited a 1 1/8-mile work with a slight fracture to his knee, Lynch said.
Lynch’s son and assistant, Charlie, was aboard El Areeb for the breeze, where he went the final half-mile in an easy 51.60 seconds in company with multiple stakes-winning mare, Winter. El Areeb was scheduled to make his next start in the Wood Memorial (G2) April 8 at Aqueduct.
“There was a little heat in his knee when we checked him his morning and we took some X-rays of it and didn’t like what we saw,” Lynch said. “Charlie worked him yesterday and if he had hurt himself or gone down yesterday it would have been a hell of a lot worse. As long as he’s all right and everyone’s safe, that’s the main thing. Athletes get injuries, and that’s the way it goes.
“Thank God it’s not career-ending or anything like that and the prognosis is good,” he added. “We’re just grateful that he’s all right and he’s going to be OK. His health and welfare is more important than any one race. He’ll have a career, and a life.”
Lynch said El Areeb will leave Sunday for the New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Penn., where Dr. Dean Richardson will perform surgery Monday. The timetable for recovery and return remains uncertain.
“We’ll see how the surgery and everything goes and whatever Dean Richardson says, that’s what he’ll get. Usually it’ll be six months,” Lynch said. “It’s just one of those things. It’s part of racing. The owners were really, really good about it. They took everything really well. [They said] do the right thing by the horse and we’ll get him back here in a few months and go from there.”
El Areeb put together a four-race win streak that began with a maiden victory and his first stakes triumph, the James F. Lewis III, last fall at Laurel prior to his graded wins in New York to kick off 2017. Most recently, he was third as the favorite in the Withers (G3) March 4 at Aqueduct.
“He’s had a couple of brilliant works the last few weeks and he’s been great,” Lynch said. “We’ll fix him and get him back in a few months. It’ll go faster than you think. We’ll have a winter campaign instead of a summer campaign, that’s all.”
