Barbaro’s legacy

Nine days ago on a Kentucky horse farm, a full brother to the late Barbaro was foaled.

Another brother, a yearling named Nicanor, already frolics in the nearby fields.

Yet, the legacy of Barbaro, the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner who will be widely, and perhaps exhaustively, celebrated as Saturday’s Derby approaches, is more likely to be an improvement in the welfare of horses than it is to be a band of brothers who are all Triple Crown contenders.

“A sibling is by no means a clone. Racing ability doesn’t necessarily follow,” said Bayne Welker Jr., an executive at Mill Ridge Farm, the Lexington horse farm where both colts were foaled.

“We have a saying, ‘Joe Louis’ mother had seven kids, but there was only one Joe.’ ”

There is no shortage of efforts to nurture the legend of the dark bay colt who won the Derby by the largest margin in 60 years only to suffer devastating injuries in the Preakness. Barbaro was euthanized Jan. 29 after an eight-month struggle by veterinarians to save his life.

NBC will air the documentary, “Barbaro: A Nation’s Horse,” at 2 p.m. today. An HBO documentary will air before the Belmont Stakes in June. And an independent production, “The First Saturday in May,” that follows Barbaro and five other horses on the 2006 Derby trail, is screening as part of the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

At least three books have been published, and there are Barbaro Beanie Babies and limited-edition model horses.

Yet, owners Roy and Gretchen Jackson have carefully kept much of the focus on the well-being of horses.

In February, shortly after Barbaro was euthanized, the Jacksons made a $3-million gift to endow a chair for equine disease research in the name of Dr. Dean W. Richardson at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Richardson, chief of surgery at Penn’s George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals in Kennett Square, Pa., put Barbaro’s shattered leg back together with screws and a metal plate last May. But Richardson ultimately was unable to keep the colt from being overcome by the effects of laminitis, a dreaded complication that often strikes a horse’s previously healthy feet because the animal is forced to bear its weight unevenly.

The Jacksons, who have a farm in the Pennsylvania horse country not far from the Widener hospital at Penn’s New Bolton Center, also supported the school’s Barbaro Fund, which raised more than $1.2 million for animal patient care and expansion of the hospital, as well as the school’s Laminitis Research Fund, which provides money for the study of the disease.

“There are a number of things we would hope for, and one would be finally getting to the bottom of the whole laminitis problem,” Roy Jackson said. “That’s going to take a great deal of research. There’s been some work, but not enough.”

Larry Bramlage, a noted equine surgeon who was the on-call veterinarian for the American Assn. of Equine Practitioners during the Triple Crown when Barbaro was injured and will be in that role again this year, praised the treatment Barbaro received at New Bolton as “state of the art” but said more progress is needed in the area of laminitis.

“That’s something that’s still a tough nut,” he said.

The Jacksons have lent their support to other causes as well, including the effort to permanently ban the slaughter of horses in the United States for human consumption in other countries. A bill is pending in the U.S. Senate.

“We would like to see the anti-slaughter bill pass, and a real effort as far as rescue places for horses and retirement places for horses,” Roy Jackson said.

“We’d also like to see efforts by everybody in the industry to make things better for the people who are the backbone of the industry, the people who work on the backstretch.

“And there’s been a lot of talk about surfaces, like there in California, helping the safety of horses. That’s something we’d like to see. I think this has brought attention to that, even though it was something that was probably going to happen anyway.”

Synthetic tracks are proliferating as the industry points to them as safer for horses because they help diminish the kind of missteps believed to have caused Barbaro’s injury.

In California, Hollywood Park and Del Mar already have replaced their dirt tracks, and Santa Anita is expected to follow suit this summer as it complies with a mandate to the state’s major tracks by the California Horse Racing Board.

As the Triple Crown season arrives, the National Thoroughbred Racing Assn. is leading still another effort supported by the Jacksons, the Barbaro Memorial Fund, with a goal to raise $1 million for equine health and safety research.

Alex Waldrop, president and chief executive of the NTRA, said about $200,000 has been contributed already, some of it through the sale of $2 rubber wristbands at www.ridingwithbarbaro.org, and efforts will be concentrated during the Triple Crown season at racetracks around the country.

“We want to use the Barbaro Memorial Fund to raise money to ensure others don’t suffer the same fate,” Waldrop said. “I think it’s a very natural response to a very tragic situation.”

It was a situation that could easily have been a black eye for racing, but instead has become a rallying point.

“I think part of what made the Barbaro story so poignant was hope he would conquer over his injuries,” Waldrop said. “Hope made the story grow. Had he been euthanized on the track, it would have been a different story.”

Before the Derby on Saturday, Churchill Downs will hold a tribute to Barbaro and the Jacksons, replaying his 6 1/2 -length Derby victory on the infield video boards.

Michael Matz, Barbaro’s trainer, was hoping to have a colt named Cherokee in the Derby, but it appeared unlikely he would make the 20-horse field and the colt might be pointed toward the Preakness.

Perhaps an hour and a half away from Churchill Downs on Saturday, the Jacksons’ mare La Ville Rouge, Barbaro’s mother, will be alongside her new foal at Mill Ridge Farm.

“A great, big, nice-looking foal,” Roy Jackson said. “I think out of about 70 so far at Mill Ridge Farm this year, this is the largest. It would be a miracle if one of the colts turned out to be 75% as good as Barbaro, probably, but you never know.”

La Ville Rouge’s other Dynaformer colt, Nicanor -- named after another of the hounds alongside Barbaro in a painting owned by the Jacksons -- will probably be at play, unaware of the hopes that await him in two years.

“You can see a competitive side to him when he’s out there in the field with the others,” said Welker, the Mill Ridge Farm executive.

“He kind of cruises around with his buddies. He just kind of lives the life of a teenage boy. He comes home to get a meal and then he goes right back out.

“Come August or September, he’ll go to Florida for breaking.

“Then, he’ll start to learn there’s a job and a career out there waiting.”

robyn.norwood@latimes.com