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FeedBarbaro in Bronze
A new work of art solidifies the legacy of a Chester County racing legend.
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Close your eyes for a minute and imagine the scene: Barbaro is roaring down the stretch for his runaway victory in the 2006 Kentucky Derby.
“I wanted Barbaro elevated up in the air where he’s at the top of his game,” says equine sculptor Alexa King. “As fast as he was running in that stretch run, I had to do everything I could to make him look like a bullet whizzing by.”
King’s bronze likeness of the famed Chester County colt is the focal point of Barbaro’s official memorial and burial site unveiled to the public at Kentucky’s venerable Churchill Downs on April 26. The statue is located outside Gate 1 near the entrance to the Kentucky Derby Museum. Barbaro’s ashes were interred beneath the bronze by a large magnolia tree.
A homebred of Roy and Gretchen Jackson’s Lael Stables outside West Grove, Barbaro shattered his right hind leg in the opening strides of the Preakness Stakes three years ago this month. His eight-month battle for survival at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center in Kennett Square drew an outpouring of nationwide support and brought renewed attention to track safety and racehorse injuries. Barbaro was euthanized due to complications in January 2007.
King was one of a select group of 10 artists who submitted one-third-scale clay models for the Jacksons to evaluate. Her small, bronzed “marquette” was the first one Gretchen Jackson viewed. She thought it best depicted the colt. “When I saw Alexa’s statue, it made my heart pound,” says Jackson, who bred, raised and raced Barbaro with her husband, Roy. “The statue was exactly how I pictured it looking in my mind.”
King’s creation measures 15 feet in length from tail to nose and 10.5 feet from the surface of the track to the top of jockey Edgar Prado’s head. All four legs off the ground, Barbaro is racing a couple paths off the rail with Prado hunched over the steely colt’s back. Look closely, and you can see a single-minded expression on Barbaro’s face, his stride displaying an immense skeletal twist—one hip down a bit, the other slightly raised.
“All the models were beautiful, but with Alexa’s, you couldn’t take your eyes off it,” says Leonard Lusky, who managed the famed Secretariat sculpture project. “For a static sculpture, it moved—it really did. Barbaro was a horse brimming with power and confidence. Alexa nailed it.”
“For Gretchen and I, it was a real education,” Roy admits. “We had no idea how complicated the bronze process was. We’ve followed the progress on Alexa’s website and made a trip up to her studio.”
Born in Muncie, Ind., King came to her art at an early age. Influenced by her parent’s artistic talents, she developed an eye for form and dynamism expressed through drawings, pastels and oils. When her father was named post commander at the Army’s Camp Atterbury in the southern part of her home state, horses came into King’s life. She connected immediately with them, spending countless hours riding the tank trails and fording streams over the 31,000 acres.
