Keeneland's Life's Work: Gary Lavin

As Will Rogers said, the best doctors in the world are the veterinarians-because their patients can't talk. “And that's true,” says Gary Lavin. “But at the same time, they don't lie to you either. So that gives us an advantage right there.”

His long intimacy with the physical structure of the Thoroughbred has taught Lavin to marvel, above all, at those intangibles housed within. Instructively, in fact, this doyen of racetrack veterinarians has observed a correlation between their performance as athlete and as patient.

Ruffian, sadly, was an exception. Otherwise, however, Lavin has found that the better the horse, the easier he or she will be to manage. “Even under anaesthesia,” Lavin remarks. “Their pulse and respiration were all just textbook.”

Read more on the TDN Look.

TDN is proud to partner with the Keeneland Library and the Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries in a very special collaboration: the Keeneland 'Life's Work' Oral History Project, a series of filmed interviews by TDN columnist Chris McGrath with significant figures in the Thoroughbred industry.

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