WELLINGTON, Fla. — When Argentine veterinarian Felix Crespo injected 21 elite polo horses with a vitamin supplement shortly before a championship match in Florida, he never imagined they would all be dead the next day.
A week later, the grief in Crespo’s eyes speaks volumes.
“I am not living,” Crespo told The Associated Press on Saturday in his first interview since the horses died last Sunday. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
At the Lechuza Caracas polo team’s sprawling 60-acre ranch in South Florida’s polo capital about 15 miles from the Atlantic Coast, Crespo was somber and soft-spoken. He sat with team manager Esteban Scott on a brown leather couch in a room decorated with horse pictures. Both men are still in shock.
“For me, it’s really a tragedy,” said Crespo, who has spent his life around horses and breeds them in his home country. “It’s going to be very tough to recover. . . . I don’t know if I am going to be back to the same person.”
A Florida pharmacy that prepared the supplement for the team on order from their local veterinarian said Thursday that the strength of an ingredient was incorrect.
Crespo, 53, has a license to practice in Argentina but not in the U.S., so he serves as the team’s training supervisor here. He can administer shots but can’t prescribe medication. The team turned to a Florida veterinarian.
