A Leg to Stand On : Artificial Hind Limb Saves Stud Career of Thoroughbred Boitron

Like Pegasus, the horse should have been accustomed to flying. He had raced all over Europe, first in his native France, then England and Italy. He then was sold during his 4-year-old season and made a transcontinental flight to the United States.

So the flight in the summer of 1981, from Los Angeles to Chicago, figured to be routine.

“I’d like to forget that one,” trainer Donn Luby said. Luby had taken over some horses being trained by Gary Jones when Jones entered a rehabilitation program because of alcohol and drug problems. Luby decided to fly the French-bred Boitron to Chicago to run in the Stars and Stripes Handicap at Arlington Park. After that, Boitron was scheduled to stay and run in the Arlington Million, thoroughbred racing’s first million-dollar race.

Boitron, bought for almost $1 million by a group of California investors, never even made it to the gate of the Stars and Stripes. Something went haywire on the flight to Chicago.

“They put the horse next to a horse of (trainer) Dick Mandella’s instead of separating them,” Luby said. “Boitron started kicking and snorting. There was an exercise boy and a groom with him, but when a horse gets scared and starts acting like that, there’s nothing you can do to stop him. He ripped one of his hocks all to hell, and tore some ligaments.”

Boitron hadn’t been tranquilized because the flight was just a few days before he was to run. By the time he got off the plane in Chicago, his right hind leg was severely damaged, and he would never run again.

Boitron returned to California and was syndicated for breeding for $900,000--40 lifetime shares being sold at $22,500 a share.

He began his stud career at Rio Vista Farm in Atascadero, but the leg continued to bother him through two breeding seasons.

“The damaged hoof had been removed, but because he had a healthy hoof on the other side, there were problems,” said Wally Dollase, who with his wife, Cynthia, owns the 209-acre Rio Vista. “He had circulation problems, and the tissue wasn’t any good. We were afraid he might founder.”

Several of the syndicate members had insurance, but Dollase didn’t want to destroy the horse. Neither did Dr. William Stevenson, a Solvang veterinarian, nor did Dr. Ralph Rush, a general practitioner from Santa Paula, who also owned shares.

Their persistence has paid off. After two more amputations at Washington State, Boitron is back at stud this season at Rio Vista, peg-leg and all.

“It looks like a foot, but it’s stainless steel,” says Dr. Barrie Grant, professor of surgery and head of the equine division of Washington State’s College of Veterinarian Medicine, in describing the prosthesis that was built for Boitron. “It weighs about 16 pounds. I’m afraid that God did a better job of designing legs than any of us can.”

The artificial leg, which was designed by Washington State’s engineering department, is about 14 inches long, starting just below the hock and running to the ground, where it is supported by a platform. The prosthesis is connected at the hock to a Fiberglas cast that covers the rest of the leg. The connecting clamps are not unlike the buckles on a ski boot.

Barbara Williams of Rio Vista reported that Boitron had covered 18 mares so far this season and has gotten at least 10 of them, and perhaps 12, in foal. That percentage compares favorably with his rate in 1982, when he was mated to 44 mares and at least 20 of the breedings resulted in foals.

One of Boitron’s first 2-year-olds, a colt, was bought at auction this year for $55,000, and Gary Jones will train him.

“Boitron was a double-game son of a gun, and as strong as they come,” Jones said. Added Luby, who in the 5-year-old’s second American start saddled Boitron for a mile win on the turf at Hollywood Park: “He was a grand-looking horse. He had as much ability as you could possibly ask for.”

Dollase, 47, who quit training 18 years ago to concentrate on rearing four children, returned to the backstretch at Del Mar last summer and has horses at Santa Anita. He remembers negotiating the sale of Boitron with Stavros Niarchos, the Greek shipping magnate, before the horse’s scheduled start in a stakes race in France in 1980.

“The sale was going to be made, but we were dickering about who would get the purse if the horse won anything,” Dollase said. “About a half-hour before the race, Niarchos said we could have whatever purse was involved. He ran second to Kilijaro and he could have been a good horse. He was everything that his French trainer, Francois Boutin, said he was.”

Boitron won 4 of 16 starts in Europe, with three seconds and four thirds. He made only one start at Hollywood Park before his last race, a winning mile on grass. He’s a son of Faraway Son, who also sired Waya, the champion older filly or mare on dirt in the United States in 1979.

Dollase said he sent Boitron to Washington State last June because Grant had been successful treating Zoot Alors, who almost died of pneumonia while getting ready to run in the Longacres Mile outside Seattle four years ago. “He saved that horse’s life and he went on to win almost $180,000,” Dollase said.

Grant, who worked as a groom and met Dollase at Del Mar in 1964, was part of a nine-man team that operated on Boitron. Grant had fitted a prosthesis on a mare owned by Ann Sims, of Pullman, Wash., a couple of years ago.

Boitron was not an easy patient. He was under anesthesia for 40 hours during the two operations and suffered from low blood pressure.

In February, eight months after he arrived at Washington State, Boitron was fitted with the prosthesis and sent back to the farm. The month before, Rio Vista advertisements in trade magazines were saying that Boitron would be at stud this season.

“I saw those ads,” Grant said. “We still had a month of work with the horse ahead of us, and I was hoping we could live up to the claims.”

On Feb. 3, during a snowstorm, Boitron was loaded on a van at Pullman for the 30-hour trip to Atascadero, which is just north of San Luis Obispo. Dr. Greg Crawley, a resident veterinarian at Washington State, went with him on the two-day trip wearing a T-shirt that said: “Boitron Is Going Home.”

When Crawley and Boitron arrived at Rio Vista at 1 a.m., Dollase looked at the peg-legged stallion and said: “This is remarkable.”

It is not unusual for an injured horse to be saved for breeding purposes, but successfully using a prosthesis of this size is rare. The undefeated Saratoga Six, who broke down last fall at Santa Anita, is wearing a protective cast over his left foreleg while servicing mares this season at North Ridge Farm near Lexington, Ky. Hoist the Flag, the champion 2-year-old of 1970 who was injured while training for the Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct the following year, went to stud with a reconstructed pastern that consisted of metal pins and a bone graft from his hip.

Spanish Riddle, who earned more than $200,000, sired seven stakes winners before his death, wearing a prosthesis on one of his front legs.

But that device was attached near the fetlock, far lower than where Boitron’s artificial limb is connected.

Actually, Boitron has two prostheses, which are changed every day for sanitary reasons. “It’s like changing a tire, and he seems to love it,” Dollase said. “The horse has a super mind; he seems to understand what we’ve done for him. He can trot with this thing but can’t gallop.”

Meantime, Barrie Grant, the man most responsible for the development of the peg-legged stallion, has leg problems of his own, though they won’t require a prosthesis. Grant is currently on crutches.

“I’m a marathoner and I run about 10,000 miles a year,” Grant said. “So I go out cross-country skiing and tear a ligament. I was going about two miles an hour. Can you imagine that?”