Four-year-old George Washington put a damper on the Breeders’ Cup Classic when he suffered an injury late in the stretch and had to be euthanatized on the track Oct. 27 at Monmouth Park.

A son of Danehill, George Washington was pulled up around the sixteenth pole by jockey Mick Kinane. It was discovered after the race that he had suffered a fracture of the cannon bone in the right front fetlock joint. Trainer Aidan O’Brien immediately told attending veterinarians to euthanatize the bay colt.

“He had an open fracture of the condyle,” said on-call veterinarian C. Wayne McIlwraith, BVSc, PhD, FRCVS, DSc, DrMedVet (hc), Dipl. ACVS, Barbara Cox Anthony Chair and Director of Orthopedic Research at Colorado State University. “The fetlock was dislocated with both sesamoids fractured as well. So it was a hopeless injury as far as repair, and he had been euthanized.”

Out of Alysheba mare Bordighera, George Washington was owned by John Magnier, Michael Tabor, and Derrick Smith. He was bred in Ireland by Lael Stables.

A sixth-place finisher in last year’s Classic, he had won six of 13 lifetime starts and earned $1,480,050