attracted to Barbaro? Why were they so devoted? Why was yesterday a day they feared so much?

It wasn't just that the horse won the Kentucky Derby looking for all the world like the next great racehorse. It wasn't just that he was

injured when the elusive Triple Crown seemed so close. It wasn't just that the colt seemed to have an uncommon will to live.

It was all of that, and it was our devotion to animals. Barbaro's story was something nearly everybody understood instinctively. This was a magnificent animal that needed human help.

So it was that, the human story that played out through the eyes and voice of a veterinarian who is equal parts compassionate and pragmatic, two owners who so loved their horse that all that mattered was the horse's well-being, and an Olympic-hero trainer who within a 2-week period found himself on his sport's highest mountain and deepest valley with the same horse.

In the end, Barbaro had to be euthanized yesterday morning at New Bolton Center. It was the humane thing. The colt was suffering.

It is the attempt everybody will remember. That was what drew everybody in and kept them there.

Really, who couldn't get this story?

Pat Chapman got it. She lived her fairy-tale horse story in 2004, when Smarty Jones, the colt she owned with her husband, Roy, took everybody on a racing ride that we all thought couldn't possibly be duplicated.

"It shook me up when I heard," she said yesterday from Florida. "It was a complete shock to me. I am just very saddened, heartbroken for Gretchen and Roy [Jackson] and all the fans."

Chapman lived through the

adulation of the Triple Crown. And then had to deal with backlash when Smarty was retired because of injury.

"Smarty had that compromised leg with the cartilage loss," she said.

She was so concerned about Smarty potentially suffering a significant injury that the decision was made to retire him a few months after the Belmont Stakes.

"[Racehorses] are almost like family," Chapman said. "They give everything they've got and then a little more. To be in that position is heartbreaking."

Pat Chapman could not have imagined another horse would come along that people would get so attached to. But it happened.

"I've never seen anything like it," she said. "As well loved as Smarty was, this horse went beyond that."

Jen Reeves got it. She was one of the five co-owners of Afleet

Alex, the girl who loved horse racing who grew into a woman who got a share of the horse-racing dream with a horse that, like Smarty, won two-thirds of the Triple Crown.