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Sep 6, 2009 11:49 am US/Eastern
Scion Of Legendary Secretariat Rescued From Farm
Freedom's Flight Was Seized From NW Dade Farm
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
A descendant of some of horse racing's greatest winners has been nursed back to health after being found neglected and virtually abandoned on a Northwest Miami-Dade farm.
When his rescuers from the SPCA found Freedom's Flight the malnourished horse, with rotted hooves and mangy hide, was tethered to a palm tree. The only clue to his royal past was a tattoo on the inside of his upper lip. A check revealed that Freedom's Flight was a descendant of two Triple Crown winners, according to
CBS4 news partners
The Miami Herald.
Birthed by Heather's Flight on February 2005 at the Claiborne Farm in Kentucky, Freedom's Flight was sired by Pulpit, the grandson of the 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew. His great-great grandfather turned out to be the legendary Secretariat who won the Triple Crown in 1973. Heather's Flight's ancestry could be traced to Nijinsky and the great Northern Dancer.
Freedom's Flight ended up in Florida in 2007 after it failed to bring in a six-figure bid from buyers at the annual Keeneland Yearling Sale. His first race was at Clader in December of that year.
The following year in a race at Gulfstream, the horse snapped his front leg at the beginning of a race yet still managed to come from behind and place third. The break, however, was a career ender. Because he was never a proven winner, those in the industry did not consider him to be breeding material. But instead of euthanizing him, Freedom's Flight owner Herman Heinlein gave him to Marian Brill, a horse rescuer. Brill tried to rehab the horse for a while but the injuries, and cost, were too much. She ended up selling him to man, whose name she didn't remember, for $500.
Investigators with the SPCA said in the following years, Freedom's Flight was neglected and forced to hobble on his broken leg giving children pony rides. In July, 2008 he was found by the SPCA on a farm in northwest Miami-Dade in dire straits. He was suffering from abscesses under his hooves, a fractured shin bone, severe rashes and rain rot – which made him loose most of his hair. He also had what's known as strangles, a highly contagious bacterial infection, which is potentially deadly.
SPCA board member Richard Cuoto adopted the horse two weeks after he was seized from the farm and spent $30 thousand on vet care and treatment.
Today Freedom's Flight is healthy and spends his days running freely in a lush pasture.
Cuoto believes if the SPCA hadn't stepped in, Freedom's Flight would have been slaughtered for his meat. Since January, more than a dozen horses have been found butchered in western Broward and southwest Miami-Dade. Animal rights advocates believe their meat, which goes for $7 to $20 dollars a pound on the black market, was sold to people from other countries where horse is a delicacy.
(© MMIX CBS Television Stations. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. CBS4 news partner The Miami Herald contributed material for this report)
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