Fort Larned escapes serious injury despite fall

Trainer Ian Wilkes reported Sunday morning that Fort Larned came out of his

fall at the start of the Grade 2, $300,000 Gulfstream Park Handicap with a

grabbed quarter. Otherwise, the 2012 Breeders' Cup Classic victor seemed to have

escaped further injury after stumbling and falling heavily to the track in his

five-year-old debut Saturday.

"He's walking good this morning," Wilkes said. "We'll keep a close eye on him a

couple more days to make sure nothing else comes up. Otherwise, he looked good

this morning. He grabbed a quarter. It wasn't too bad. It could have been a lot

worse."

Two jumps out of the starting gate, Fort Larned, who was sent to post as the

4-5 favorite, stumbled badly and tumbled to the ground, unseating jockey Brian

Hernandez Jr.

Hernandez emerged unscathed from

that mishap and talked about it outside the jockeys' room at Fair

Grounds shortly before Sunday's 1ST race.

"I'm fine today," he said. "I didn't get hurt at all. The only thing that was

bruised was my pride. Ian called me last night to make sure I was all right. I told him I was fine and that I

just hoped the horse was all right, too, and my only concern was for the horse.

I thought that was a very nice thing for Ian to do. He's got a lot of class.

"You don't like to get started like that," Wilkes added. "Hopefully, we got all

the bad luck out of the way and we just move ahead. You had this race mapped

out for four months and you know your horse is on the top of his game and ready

to run. It was just a bad step. He was too sharp out of the box. It's just one

of those things in racing."

"This is a tough game," said Hernandez, who has been aboard Fort

Larned for his past five races. "It's unbelievable that

something like that can happen, but it does in racing. They tell me they clocked

the horse in something like 1:30 for the mile. The horse ran huge without me."

As disheartening as he found the incident to be, Wilkes was able to count his

blessings Sunday morning.

"How lucky do we get?" Wilkes asked. "The horse fell on his head; he's lucky he

didn't really hurt himself. He could have ripped his whole heel off or he could

have broken his leg. The way he fell, his whole head hit the ground."

Churchill Downs' spring meeting would be a likely spot for Fort Larned's return

to action, but his trainer is concentrating on the immediate future with the son

of E Dubai.

"I just want to make sure he's OK. The next few days we'll keep a close eye on

him and we'll evaluate where we're at," Wilkes said. "You just want to be sure

he's 110 percent before you start making plans."

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