South Park's big recovery

It took rare magnetic resonance imaging equipment in Ontario and the surgical skill of a Cornell veterinarian to restore South Park Hanover to the racetrack. He makes his next start in Thursday night’s $43,315 Fox Sports Net Final at the Meadowlands and is rated 5-1 in the morning line.

“He had the surgery on August 12, 2005 at Cornell, and it was performed by Dr. Lisa A. Fortier,” said Ted Gewertz, who owns the four-year-old pacer with Milton and Martha Frank and trainer Charles Connor Jr. “He was taken for an MRI at Guelph [the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph in Ontario] after earlier attempts to diagnose the lameness by other means, including ultrasound, radiographs and bone scans, were unsuccessful.

“The MRI revealed adhesions to the deep flexor tendon of the right hind leg at the mid-pastern level,” he explained. “These were broken down and removed by tenoscopic surgery. The problem was rare in the sense that it was unusual that the diagnosis could both be made and then treated by the same surgeons.”

“It was an adhesion in the very distal aspect of his tendon sheath,” said Dr. Fortier. “The adhesion was between the deep flexor tendon and the sheath itself, which could only be seen on MRI. We see adhesions like this elsewhere in the sheath, but never before in this location or of this type.”

“South Park Hanover was lame for a long time because [of the] stricture on the tendon sheath, but nobody could figure out why he was lame as this problem did not show up on x-rays,” noted Claire Chappell, Gewertz’s wife and co-racing enthusiast. “The consensus was that he should be de-nerved but Ted felt that was wrong to do to a horse, especially when we did not know exactly what was wrong with him. So he insisted that South Park Hanover be sent to Cornell, where he came under the care of Dr Fortier, who likewise was determined to get to the bottom of things. Finally they ended up sending him to Guelph where they had just gotten some new MRI equipment; previously the only machine was in California. The MRI enabled Lisa [Fortier] to identify the problem, and she was then able to surgically release the sheath. South Park Hanover made a full recovery and Ted and Lisa are justifiably proud of themselves.”

Since his return to the races in March, South Park Hanover has two wins in five starts. Lifetime, the son of Artsplace has four wins and two seconds from 15 starts and earnings of $45,368.

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