Surgery No Problem for Sunday Silence : Horse Racing: It will be at least three months before colt can train after operation to remove bone chips in his right knee.

After half an hour of arthroscopic surgery to remove two tiny bone chips in his right knee and another hour in recovery, Sunday Silence was back in his stall at Hollywood Park shortly after noon Thursday and looking for something to eat.

“He’s tough, isn’t he?” said Charlie Whittingham, trainer and part owner of the flashy black colt, who nailed down horse-of-the-year honors by winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Nov. 4 at Gulfstream Park in Hallandale, Fla.

“He’s still a little wobbly from the anesthetic,” Whittingham added as he gave Sunday Silence a peppermint candy. “But he’ll be back to his old self in no time.”

It will be at least three months before Sunday Silence can go back into serious training, and a return to competition before next May is unlikely. Still, both Whittingham and Dr. Greg Ferraro, who performed the surgery, insist that Sunday Silence will show no lasting ill effects.

“By the second half of next year he ought to be raring to go,” Ferraro said.

Sunday Silence won this year’s Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Breeders’ Cup Classic and a record $4.6 million. He defeated East Coast rival Easy Goer in three of four encounters.

“He’s probably dreaming about that big red son-of-a-gun right now,” Whittingham said as he watched Sunday Silence being wheeled into the operating room at the Hollywood Park equine clinic at 10:10 a.m. Thursday. “Dreaming about swishing his tail in Easy Goer’s kisser one more time.”

Whittingham watched the operation alongside Sunday Silence’s exercise rider, Pam Mabes, who tried to keep her mind on other things, such as her planned vacation to the West Indies.

“If this horse doesn’t get up, I’ll be going to the islands with you,” Whittingham joked through a nervous grin.

The surgery, though, was fairly routine by today’s thoroughbred veterinary standards. Ferraro said he performs four or five such operations each week.

“This is one of our most common injuries,” said Ferraro, who was assisted by Dr. Steve Buttgenbach and senior technician Barbara Freeman.

The patient, though, was anything but common.

“Yeah, with a horse like this, it turns up the heat a little,” Ferraro said. “Naturally, you treat them all the same. But maybe I didn’t sleep quite as well last night.”

After being anesthetized, Sunday Silence was raised by his feet with a hydraulic lift and lowered onto a padded operating table. The contour of the table kept him squarely on his back.

Ferraro extended the colt’s right leg and secured the hoof in a brace, then prepped the knee area. Two small incisions were made on either side of the knee, one for the arthroscope and the other for an array of customized surgical instruments.

Once the scope was inserted, the interior of the joint was displayed on a television monitor. Maneuvering the scope with his left hand and the instruments with his right, Ferraro broke the first chip away from the main bone and withdrew it through the incision. He then chiseled away a rough outcropping and smoothed the surface of the bone to facilitate recovery and prevent complications.

Ferraro switched the scope to the outside incision and removed the smaller, free-floating chip on the inside of the knee.

The larger of the two bone chips was discovered late last week on X-rays taken at Santa Anita in Sunday Silence’s stall. The second chip was detected when a more extensive set of X-rays was taken just before Thursday’s surgery.

“The second chip probably wouldn’t have bothered him by itself,” Ferraro said. “But as long as we were going into the joint, we decided to get everything we could while we were there.”