Ankle injury knocks Leave the Light On off Triple Crown trail

An ankle injury suffered in his most recent workout has

knocked Grade 2 winner Leave the Light On (Horse Greeley) off the Triple Crown trail.

Trained by Chad Brown for Seth Klarman's Klaravich Stable

and William H. Lawrence, Leave the Light On will have surgery next week at the

Rood and Riddle Equine Clinic in Lexington, Kentucky.

"Leave the Light On emerged from his latest workout with an

injury to his right hind ankle. It requires surgery and that's probably going to

put him on the shelf for a couple months," Brown explained. "It's terrible news for

all of us associated with the horse. To already have 10 points in the bank

(toward a Kentucky Derby [G1] starting berth), it

really stings.

"We always put the horse first and, thankfully, this is not only not

life-threatening, it's not even career-threatening," Brown added. "It's a

situation where the timing is very unfortunate and you never want these horses

to be injured, but this seems fixable. Hopefully, Leave the Light On will

recover and be back in big races in the fall."

The three-year-old chestnut had been training

steadily at Palm Meadows, Gulfstream Park's satellite training facility in Palm

Beach County, including a five-furlong breeze in 1:00 4/5 on Sunday, January 25. He was being

pointed to the $400,000 Fountain of Youth S. (G2) on February 21 at

Gulfstream for his three-year-old debut.

Leave the Light On didn't make his career debut until last

fall, breaking his maiden by 4 1/2 lengths in his second start at Belmont Park and posting a front-running,

half-length victory in the 1 1/8-mile Remsen S. (G2) on November 29 at Aqueduct.

"There's a lot of nice races out there and with our

program, we always look at the big picture if possible," Brown said. "We try to

look at the whole career of the horse. Of course, our first choice was to go to

the Derby. That's the race we want to win and everyone wants to win, but not at

the expense of the horse. If the horse needs to be stopped on and cleaned up,

then that's what we're going to do. Hopefully he has a long, successful career

in our barn."