Sports

I’ll Have Another’s injury is disappointing, but horse’s health is top priority

I’ll Have Another displays bandages outside of Barn 2 yesterday

I’ll Have Another displays bandages outside of Barn 2 yesterday (Getty Images)

This is a sport that has been jonesing for a superstar for years — for decades — and keeps investing hearts and souls and dollars in the hope that the next Secretariat, the next Whirlaway, the next Citation is just around the top of the stretch.

So every few years a Funny Cide emerges, or a Smarty Jones, and they are treated like four-legged rock stars. Whenever that happens, all the ominous stories that pollute the sport of horse racing — the corruption, the shady characters, the dwindling crowds, all of it — seem to dissolve in a flood of interest.

The Sport of Kings can still have that effect on us. So, yes: we who care about the sport, its rich history and its uncertain future, we all need another Affirmed. We need another Seattle Slew. We really needed I’ll Have Another to be what we wanted him to be, to run a mile and a half faster than any other horse in the world today.

But here is what we most certainly didn’t need:

We didn’t need a hush falling down around the great racetrack hard by Hempstead Turnpike. We didn’t need 110,000 people with their hands over their mouths, barely noticing the finish line while an injured horse limped in place, while people raced to shield him from prying eyes and television cameras.

We most certainly did not need another Barbaro.

The sport absolutely did not need that.

And the Belmont Stakes, one of the great big events in a big-event town, did not need that. As much as everyone intending on witnessing history today wanted I’ll Have Another to take a dash at forever, good sense had to prevail, even if it carried bad news. Even if it means that we may see a .400 hitter — or a 70-game hitting streak — before we see another horse win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont in the same spring.

“It’s a bummer,” is the way the horse’s trainer, Doug O’Neill, described the revelation that a swollen front left tendon will keep I’ll Have Another out of today’s race, hastening his retirement. “It’s not tragic, but it’s a huge disappointment.”

No, it’s not tragic. Tragic would have been this injury camouflaging itself until 6:40 or so this afternoon, a horse seeking an extra gear for a distance he has never run before, a tendon not up for the task. We live in a time when the welfare of horses is at last being taken seriously even by non-railbirds, when HBO canceled a popular show because it lost a couple of horses to the cause.

And we are still haunted by the image and the legacy of Barbaro, who was well on the way to being the most popular racehorse since Secretariat, breaking down at the 2006 Preakness. Again: the people who most love racing suffered at that, but it was the legions of casual fans looking for a reason to love the sport who were also affected. And many have never been back.

“He looks great,” O’Neill’s brother, Dennis, said. “But you just can’t take a chance. You wouldn’t run a horse if you think something might happen.”

No. You wouldn’t. Not with the memory of Barbaro still fresh. Not at Belmont Park, eternal resting place of the great filly Ruffian, buried not far from the infield flagpole, her nose eternally pointed toward the finish line. For a generation of racing fans, that challenge race between Ruffian and Foolish Pleasure in July of 1975 was the first jolt of reality of just how high the stakes really are whenever a starting gate rings open (and for anyone else, a reading of W.C. Heinz’s classic story, “Death of a Racehorse,” from the New York Sun of July 29, 1949 — Google it at once — will do just fine).

No. It is terrible the Belmont will be shuffled to the background now that I’ll Have Another is filing for his pension. It’s a bad blow for the track, for the sport, for NBC, even for the NHL, which was hoping for a big lead-in from the race for Game 5 of Devils-Kings to combat the Celtics-Heat and Mets-Yankees games that will be airing simultaneously.

Bad day all around.

But it could have been worse. A lot worse.

michasel.vaccaro@nypost.com