Sumotori recovering after belly sliced open during race

It was not an ideal way to start the year for a racehorse, but a 3-year-old gelding that split open most of its underside on a metal barrier during the Waikouaiti races on New Year's Day is making a remarkable recovery in Mosgiel.

Ashburton-based Sumotori, trained by Pam Gerard and owned by Greg Jones, was injured when the horse in front ran through a barrier about 450m into the second race of the day.

The impact caused a metal section of the barrier to come loose, which Sumotori, running his first race, was then forced to jump.

What happened next, said Dunedin horse veterinarian Pete Gillespie from VetEquine Otago, were the worst injuries he had seen on a horse that survived.

As Sumotori jumped, the metal railing ran "like a knife" along the horse's belly, opening a 1.2m-long slice in the skin on the left of his belly.

Rider Daniel Stackhouse, of Ashburton, was unhitched, but uninjured, while Sumotori, bleeding heavily, ran another 1000m to finish the race. Once he was stopped, veterinarian Annemarie Wezenbeek worked to stem the bleeding with wadding and bandaging, but the horse's blood pressure was too low to use an ananaesthetic straight away.

In a three-hour surgery at Mosgiel the following day, Mr Gillespie and Ms Wezenbeek administered hundreds of stitches, patching muscles and stitching skin back together where they could.

"Essentially he ran into a blade. He had three to four feet [90 to 120cm] of lacerations, and some parts were too jagged to put back together and patches of skin were missing. It was quite a difficult surgery," Mr Gillespie said.

"I've been doing this for 30 years and it is the worst [injury], where the horse survived, that I've seen."