Fallen Filly Can’t Be Saved

Her sire, the 1990 Kentucky Derby winner Unbridled, died on Oct. 18, and now Exogenous, one of his talented daughters, has also been euthanized, after failing to recover from injuries suffered just before the running of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Belmont Park a week ago.

Exogenous, who reared and fell moments before she was to leave the paddock tunnel for the Distaff post parade, was given a lethal injection Friday.

The first couple of days after the Breeders’ Cup, the prognosis was promising and there was even hope that Exogenous might race again, but her condition worsened Tuesday. By Wednesday, she had quit eating. Complications from a brain hemorrhage were too much for the gray filly to overcome, and the end came about 3 a.m. Friday.

“We didn’t want her to suffer anymore,” said veterinarian Nancy Brennan. “She was too good a filly for that. She lived a lot longer than most horses that have had a head injury like that.”

An hour before she was euthanized, Exogenous suffered a major seizure.

“The tissue kept swelling around her brain and that was the main cause of all the complications,” Brennan said. “From Tuesday on, she had had trouble standing and had very little coordination.”

Jockey Javier Castellano, who had won the Gazelle Handicap and the Beldame Stakes with Exogenous at Belmont this fall, was to have ridden the filly last Saturday in the Distaff. Exogenous was the morning-line second choice in the race against Flute, a filly she had beaten in the Beldame.

Ironically, the Distaff was won by the longshot Unbridled Elaine, a daughter of Unbridled’s Song and a granddaughter of Unbridled.

“The pony boy tried to take her and she just flipped,” Castellano said of Exogenous. “It was so fast that I didn’t have the chance to do anything. I tried to stay with her, but she fell over.”

Castellano was not injured.

“I’m very sad,” he said Friday. “She was such a nice filly, and I know she would have won that race.”

Trained by Scotty Schulhofer and his son Randy, Exogenous was bred and owned by Vernon Heath’s Centaur Farms. Before the Distaff, Heath had pledged a share of Exogenous’ Breeders’ Cup earnings to a relief fund for families of the victims of the terrorist attacks in New York on Sept. 11.

“I had been close to this filly since she was a 2-year-old,” Randy Schulhofer said. “She was always a handful around the track. She was a flighty, good-feeling filly, and things would startle her. When I would pony her to the track, she would hear and see something and wheel [around] on you. She had a couple of good days [after the injury], but we knew we were battling against the odds from the start.”

Exogenous had five wins, four seconds and one third in 12 starts and earned $945,560. This year, she won four of seven races and, in a splintered division, she could win the Eclipse Award for best 3-year-old filly.

Unbridled, who also won the Breeders’ Cup Classic, at Belmont Park, in 1990, was euthanized after undergoing two stomach operations. A 14-year-old, he earned $4.4 million on the track and sired 24 stakes winners, one of them Grindstone, the 1996 Derby winner.

The first Breeders’ Cup Distaff ever run at Belmont Park, in 1990, resulted in the death of Go For Wand, who fell in the stretch and suffered fatal injuries. Two other horses--Mr. Nickerson and Shaker Knit--were also euthanized after they were injured in the Sprint Stakes that day.

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Jump Start, who fractured his left foreleg in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, underwent surgery Sunday and will begin a stud career at Overbrook Farm in Lexington, Ky., next year.... Trainer Bobby Frankel said that You, who ran fourth at 9-10 in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, was running a 102-degree fever the morning after the race.

The next start for Tiznow, winner of the last two Breeders’ Cup Classics, might be the $400,000 Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs on Nov. 23. Tiznow will be paraded in the paddock after the fourth race on today’s California Cup card at Santa Anita.

Officer, fifth at 7-10 in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, is the 3-5 morning-line favorite in today’s Cal Cup Juvenile..... I Love Silver, more than 12 lengths behind after half a mile, won Friday’s $73,500 Skywalker Handicap, beating Bosque Redondo by two lengths. Favored Millennium Wind, the Blue Grass winner making his first start since running 11th in the Kentucky Derby, finished last in the seven-horse field.

California Cup

* Where: Santa Anita.

* When: Today.

* Post time: Noon.

* Format: Card exclusively for Cal-bred horses.