Holy Bull Hurt, Retired to Stud : Horse racing: Injury to ligament during the Donn Handicap in Florida brings early end to the on-track career of 1994’s horse of the year.

Careers sometimes end with a whimper and sometimes with a bang.

For Holy Bull, 1994’s horse of the year, the career-ending sound Saturday was a loud pop and a cry of anguish from his jockey, Mike Smith.

“Oh, no, Jerry!” Smith yelled to Jerry Bailey as their horses cruised down the backstretch at Gulfstream Park. Bailey was riding Cigar, the eventual 5 1/2-length winner of the $300,000 Donn Handicap, and Smith, as usual, was astride Holy Bull, the 3-10 favorite.

Holy Bull was just outside Cigar nearing the 4 1/2-furlong pole, less than a half-length from the lead, when Bailey heard the sound and Smith cried out.

“It wasn’t like the pop you sometimes hear,” Bailey said. “It didn’t sound like a branch breaking. In fact, I thought it might have been Mike’s iron. I thought that maybe his stirrup broke.”

Smith started to pull up his 4-year-old colt.

“It wasn’t easy,” Smith said. “We were going at a rapid speed and all of a sudden I was trying to stop. But I didn’t want any more damage than he already had.”

Smith jumped off Holy Bull, holding on to the reins, waved an outrider away and waited for the horse ambulance to arrive.

In the stands, trainer Jimmy Croll and a crowd of 18,963 watched in disbelief. There was an unusual mid-race silence. Once again, with a good horse breaking down in a big race, the worst-case flashbacks of Ruffian, Go For Wand, Mr Brooks, Union City and Prairie Bayou raced across the consciousness.

Billy Croll, the trainer’s son and an assistant at the barn, didn’t wait for the race to end before he moved in the direction of Holy Bull.

“I knew at the five-eighths pole that he wasn’t right,” the younger Croll said. “I couldn’t wait to get to him. I thought about swimming across the lake, but I felt I might drown.”

A track van took Jimmy Croll to the side of his distressed horse. Three handlers were trying to load Holy Bull into the van, one of them sustaining minor injuries when he was kicked in the lower chest.

“When he started to bear out, I knew something was amiss,” the elder Croll said. “I was afraid to look at what I was going to see. I’ve seen so many through the years. Then when I got to him, I breathed a sigh of relief.”

Back at the barn, while Holy Bull stood in his stall, pawing the ground with a six-pound aluminum cast on his lower left foreleg, a technician arrived and took six X-rays of the injured area. They all were negative, but the colt suffered strained ligaments below the ankle and on the tendon. They are not life-threatening injuries, but Croll, a 74-year-old Hall of Fame trainer who inherited Holy Bull in 1993 after the death of Rachel Carpenter, his client of 37 years, quickly made the decision to retire the horse from the track.

“A lesser horse, you’d probably think about letting him heal and bringing him back,” Croll said. “But not this one. He definitely pulled a lower suspensory. It’s a bitter pill, but then this is the nature of the game. I’m about as disappointed as you could get. I don’t know how I could be more disappointed. This is a bitter pill. He had the chance to continue doing a lot of great things. Now, he’ll just go to the (breeding) farm sooner than expected.”

The breeding season starts on Feb. 15 and, depending on how quickly Holy Bull recovers from the injury, he is likely to be bred to some mares at Jonabell Farm in Lexington, Ky., this spring. Instead of heading to California from here, for the $1-million Santa Anita Handicap on March 11, the career for the modestly bred colt ends with 13 victories in 16 starts and purses of $2.4 million.

Bill Mott, who trains Cigar for owner Allen Paulson, came by Holy Bull’s barn about 90 minutes after the race to offer his regrets to Jimmy Croll.

“I’m terribly disappointed for Mr. Croll and his horse,” Mott said. “It’s a terrible blow. No one wants to win like this. My horse might have beaten Holy Bull, anyway, but now we’ll never know.”

Bailey, Cigar’s jockey, also had a hollow feeling.

“You hate to see this happen,” he said. “There shouldn’t have been any stress on either horse when it happened. Both of us were running comfortably, and the fractions (23 3/5 and 46 2/5 seconds) weren’t that fast.”

Holy Bull had drawn the outside post position, but he broke sharply and Smith quickly angled him toward the inside. Going into the first turn, he was running second behind Cigar, which was the pre-race plan.

Smith came off the track in tears. “He warmed up great, playing and having a good time,” the jockey said back at the barn. “After the break, I had a light hold on him. He was going well in hand, and going down the backstretch he pinned his ears back, but then two strides later it happened. He took a misstep.

“I’ve got an emptiness about all this. I feel like the life has come out of me. A horse this good doesn’t come around that often.”

As darkness neared in South Florida, Jimmy Croll thanked Mike Smith for quickly reacting to the mishap and said good night.

“I guess he just put his foot down wrong,” Croll said. “Who knows? We can all be thankful that it wasn’t any worse than it was.”