Leg injury sidelines Tencendur for year

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Tencendur, runner-up to Mr. Z in the Ohio Derby and to Frosted in the Grade 1 Wood Memorial, is out for the year after suffering a fractured sesamoid in his left foreleg, his owner, Phil Birsh, said Tuesday afternoon.

Tencendur, a New York-bred son of Warrior’s Reward trained by George Weaver, was pointing to the Grade 2 Jim Dandy here on Aug. 1.

Birsh said it took three X-rays to find the injury, so he thinks it is minor enough that Tencendur could come back and race again next year.

“If he’s able to race again, we will,” Birsh said. “If he’s not, he won’t. He was just starting to mature. I think he’ll be a really good 4-year-old and a very impressive sire.”

Birsh said Tencendur would undergo surgery in the next 48 hours and would recuperate on Birsh’s farm near Saratoga Springs.

“If you don’t have enough of a preparatory system for this kind of thing you really are setting yourself up for devastation,” Birsh said. “The better the horse is, the faster the horse is, the more things can go wrong. The slower ones don’t get hurt.”

In between his runner-up finishes in the Wood Memorial and Ohio Derby, Tencendur finished 17th in the Kentucky Derby.