On the Sunday morning of Oct. 26, 1986, Larry Bramlage was minding his own business in a Chicago hotel as he prepared for a lecture to the American College of Veterinary Surgeons. Bramlage was a Kansas native who received his DVM credentials at Kansas State University and his master’s degree from Ohio State University, where he was on the teaching faculty, as well as an equine veterinary surgeon of growing repute.

At the same time on Long Island, N.Y., the 2-year-old filly Personal Ensign was coming to the end of a workout at Belmont Park in preparation for her scheduled appearance in the Nov. 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita Park. She was a daughter of Private Account, bred and owned by Ogden Phipps, patriarch of the influential New York racing family, and trained by Claude “Shug” McGaughey. To that point, Personal Ensign had won both of her races, including the prestigious Frizette Stakes just 13 days earlier.

Personal Ensign under Randy Romero (EQUI-PHOTO)

The presentation to the veterinary surgeons went well, but the workout did not. Over the ensuing days, the lives of Bramlage and Personal Ensign would intersect in a flash of kismet that would put a bright spotlight on a relatively new branch of equine surgery, as well as make possible a transcendent racing career for a Thoroughbred of uncommon quality.

By now, the name of Personal Ensign is whispered in the same breath as the all-time greats among racing’s collection of hallmark fillies and mares. Over three seasons of competition, she won all 13 of her starts, climaxed by her epic showdown with Winning Colors in the 1988 Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Churchill Downs. Following that race where she rallied in the stretch to edge a Kentucky Derby winner, she was retired as the Eclipse Award champion older female, after which she became a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 1993.

None of that would have been possible, however, had it not been for a series of calm, correct decisions made in concert with an hour’s worth of intricate surgery and a patient, perfect recovery after Personal Ensign fractured a bone in a back leg during that Sunday morning workout. Nearly four decades later, the surgery required to repair her fractured pastern is as common as trimming a hoof. In 1986, however, it was Bramlage and a small group of colleagues in equine orthopedics who were on the cutting edge of surgical advances that would change the way many racing and training injuries were perceived.

As orthopedic procedures on human patients advanced through the 1970s, the veterinary equine world followed.

“Ankle fusion — fetlock arthrodesis — moved faster than anything else, because that’s the single most common fatal injury for horses,” said Bramlage, who practices at Rood and Riddle Equine in Lexington. “I had been working on fetlock arthrodesis as a hobby, then in 1978 when we did the first one it showed a lot of promise.”

Bramlage reading an x-ray at Rood & Riddle. (BloodHorse Library/Rick Samuels)

Joint fusion meant an end to any sort of athletic life. However, the repair of fractures was another possible story. Bramlage said the idea for internal fixation of equine bone fractures came from the world of human orthopedics, specifically from specialists in the ski capitals of Europe — Switzerland and southern Germany — where a typical injury was a fracture of the tibia above the top line of a ski boot.

“Bone plating and screws were transported from Europe while I was at the veterinary school at Ohio State,” Bramlage said. “Courses were both human and veterinary, although we soon realized you could not transport human techniques to horses. The principles were the same, but we had to develop techniques that were strong enough and specific enough to be used in the horse. Once we began to do that, internal fixation took off.”

About the same time, Bramlage and others — including Dr. Wayne McIlwraith at Purdue University — were pushing for more support in the field of equine arthroscopic surgery.

“It was around 1980, and I remember it well,” Bramlage said. “I was at the Westin Hotel in downtown Cincinnati for the first human arthroscopy training course. It was so rudimentary. Basically, it was, ‘These are the instruments. This is how you maneuver.’ Very crude compared to what students see today. I was newly on the faculty at Ohio State, but I couldn’t convince the school to get an arthroscope until 1982. It was looked at initially as sort of a fancy toy.

“That’s why I was able to move faster with internal fixation than arthroscopy,” Bramlage added. “There was only a certain amount of money to go around. I couldn’t convince them that arthroscopy was the surgery of the future for more than a year, when we finally got the scopes.”

Of the disciplines in Bramlage’s expanding tool box, it was internal fixation that was prescribed for Personal Ensign. To the best of his memory, the timeline of the drama went something like this:

On the Monday after her injury, after the lower part of the left hind leg had been X-rayed and stabilized with a temporary cast, McGaughey reached out to Bramlage at his Ohio State office, which in turn called him at his Chicago hotel.

“I’d gotten to know Shug through work I’d done for Warner Jones and Hermitage Farm,” Bramlage said. “She had been evaluated by Dr. Reed, and the idea of internal fixation to repair the pastern was thought to be a viable option.”

Bramlage in current office at Rood and Riddle. (BloodHorse Library/Rick Samuels)

That would be Dr. William O. Reed, the respected veterinary surgeon who was among the pioneers of internal fixation procedures. His clinic was located on Plainfield Avenue near Belmont Park.

“I had done a primary fusion of a fetlock on the very good grass horse Noble Dancer at Dr. Reed’s a few years before that,” Bramlage said. “It was a bad fracture in a workout, one that required a plate and screws, but we saved him as a stallion. So I had some history there.

“Before I left, I had a description of the fracture from Bill Reed,” Bramlage said. “Then I had some equipment sent to New York from Ohio State. We were in the process of developing a new, bigger, stronger screw for horses. The Swiss company we were working with was quite helpful. Unlike most companies that would not see enough of a market, they were very interested in horses. They’d had some prototypes made, so I had those FedExed to New York. I got there on Tuesday, which is the first time I saw the X-rays.”

Descending from the hock joint, the major bones of the back leg mirror those in the front below the knee. First comes the cannon, then the long pastern, the short pastern, and, within the hoof, the coffin bone. The term “pastern” comes from the middle English, referring to the practice of shackling a horse in a pasture by the lower leg.

“She had what’s called a frontal plane fracture,” Bramlage said. “If you looked at the pastern from the front, you would not see the fracture. But from the side you would see the bone is split right in half. It’s not a very common fracture, even now. We see the sagittal ones, where if you look at them from the front, you’re looking into the fracture. I had never done one exactly like hers. In my experience at the time, they were more common in Standardbreds. So at least the principles were the same.”

On Wednesday, the day of surgery, Dr. Reed and the clinic anesthetist were assisting Bramlage, who came ready with five stainless steel lag screws, similar in size to those used in human orthopedic surgeries. He also had one of the larger, prototype screws handy, just in case.

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“There were two big pieces of bone we had to work with,” Bramlage said. “You want to place the screws in the strongest bone area, not too close together, for your best possibility for stable fixation with the least chance of reaction from ligaments.”

Screws number one, two, and three were slipped cleanly through glide holes drilled in the front piece of bone, at which point the threads grabbed the rear piece of bone and were tightened to close the fracture gap.

“Number four, when I tightened it, I pulled the threads out of the back part of the bone and it wouldn’t hold,” Bramlage said. “Fortunately, we had that bigger screw, so I could retap the glide hole, insert the larger screw, and tighten it down with enough purchase to hold it.”

Screw number five followed, and the job was all but done. Personal Ensign’s leg was fitted with a protective cast and she was placed in a padded recovery stall, similar to the procedure followed after Ruffian underwent a much more extensive surgical repair 11 years before in the same clinic in the wake of her Belmont Park match race with Foolish Pleasure.

“A lot of credit in the evolution of orthopedic surgery goes to the advances in anesthesiology,” Bramlage said. “That’s one of the biggest differences in repairing a fracture today, compared to when we did it with Personal Ensign. The recovery can be violent, especially with the drugs we had back then. Ruffian is the most dramatic example of that.”

Ruffian emerged from the anesthetic thrashing so severely that she refractured her leg. At that point, euthanasia was the only option.

“Personal Ensign did well in recovery,” Bramlage said. “The key is for the horse to lay quietly until they get their wits about them, after blowing off the anesthesia. She might have made one or two attempts, but it really wasn’t a circus getting her back on her feet. She was smart enough.”

Personal Ensign, outside, winning 1988 Breeders’ Cup Distaff. (BloodHorse Library/Dan Johnson)

Three days later, as Personal Ensign continued her post-op recovery at Reed’s clinic, Brave Raj won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies by 5 1/2 lengths at Santa Anita. For all intents and purposes, it looked as if the 2-year-old class of 1986 would go on without Personal Ensign.

“The only premise we went into the surgery with was to save her as a broodmare,” Bramlage said. “Fortunately, we got the fracture back together anatomically so well, I said to Shug soon after the surgery that she should be fine as a broodmare, and there was an outside chance he might be able to train her. He didn’t believe me, and there was no reason to. We still had to avoid arthritis in two joints. But if it healed cleanly, there was that chance. As it turned out, guardian angels were sitting on all our shoulders.”

Personal Ensign spent the winter of 1986-’87 in the warmth of Florida under the supervision of Bramlage’s colleague, Dr. Tom Brokken.

“Tom would FedEx her X-rays to me at three-week intervals,” Bramlage said. “We’d discuss next steps — when could she walk, when to take her to the track. Of course, the first decision about her future had to be made fairly early. Should she go back to Claiborne Farm to be bred? The fracture was healing cleanly, everything going OK, and Tom would relay all that to Shug. They were brave enough to say, ‘Let’s see if we can race her.’ ”

The rest is a tale best told around campfires, befitting its place in the lore of the sport. Personal Ensign returned in an allowance race Sept. 6, 1987, at Belmont Park, 45 weeks after fracturing that pastern. Randy Romero had ridden the filly in her pair of wins at 2 and was ready to pick up where they left off. Unfortunately, the rider was committed to ride Rokeby Stables’ Dance of Life the same day in the Arlington Million, so Jerry Bailey stepped aboard Personal Ensign for the comeback win. Adding insult to emotional injury, Dance of Life was scratched from the Million. Romero never strayed far from Personal Ensign again.

She won three more races in 1987, including the Grade 1 Beldame Stakes against older mares. McGaughey gave her the winter off, then brought her back for a perfect, seven-race campaign at age 4 in 1988 replete with highlights — the Grade 2 Molly Pitcher Handicap at Monmouth Park under 125 pounds; the Grade 1 Maskette Stakes against Winning Colors; the Grade 1 Whitney Handicap at Saratoga Race Course against classy Gulch, and another Beldame victory, this time by 5 1/2 lengths.

“During that time I would have seen her at the barn when I was in New York for the Belmont Stakes, or up in Saratoga,” Bramlage said. “But the only race of hers I ever saw in person was at the Breeders’ Cup.”

He picked the right one. Thirty-five years ago, on a muddy track at Churchill Downs beneath darkening, stormy skies, Personal Ensign caught Winning Colors in the final strides of the Breeders’ Cup Distaff to record her 13th victory without a defeat.

“Even the best horses will have a bad day, or a day they were supposed to win and they didn’t,” Bramlage said. “She never had one of those days. And she meant so much for many reasons. Yes, she was lucky for my career. And we’d done those surgeries before. But she was the first prominent horse who showed that you could do internal fixation, and they could come back as a quality athlete. Now, we expect them to be able to race.”

All they wanted to do was save her for a broodmare, which would have been just fine, although motherhood delayed for Personal Ensign was hardly time wasted. Once she joined the Phipps broodmare band, Personal Ensign proceeded to establish her own dynasty, particularly through her daughter, My Flag, and My Flag’s daughter, Storm Flag Flying, both winners of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, while Personal Ensign’s son, Miner’s Mark, won the Jockey Club Gold Cup.

Winner’s circle after 1988 Breeders’ Cup Distaff, BloodHorse Library, Dan Johnson (Breeders’ Cup photo)

More than a dozen years after her death, Personal Ensign’s influence lives on. Beat the Drums, a daughter of Storm Flag Flying, is responsible for Dynamic One, winner of the 2022 Suburban Stakes. Salute, a daughter of Personal Ensign, is the dam of Snap Decision, a winner of multiple graded hurdle races, including the 2022 Jonathan Sheppard Handicap at Saratoga. Possibility, another daughter of Personal Ensign, is the dam of Unbound, dam of 2023 Woody Stephens Stakes winner Arabian Lion.

For his part, Bramlage has been lavished with any number of industry accolades throughout his long career. Then came the summer of 2023 during the week of The Jockey Club Round Table in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., when he was handed a prize, in his words, “that probably meant more to me than anything else, considering the name.” Bramlage was presented with the Dinny Phipps Award, named for the son of Ogden Phipps, which honors “an individual or individuals who have demonstrated dedication to equine health.” Sounds like the perfect description of the man who put Personal Ensign back together again.

“I still have a set of her follow-up X-rays in a filing cabinet,” Bramlage said. “And I also have two of her halters. One of them was given to me by Gus Koch of Claiborne Farm after she was named Broodmare of the Year. The other one was the halter they took off her after she died. That one is hanging in my office.”