I was there when Barbaro, a great but fleeting champion, ran the race that led to his death. That memory turns 20 on May 20, and with the 2026 Preakness Stakes set for Saturday, the heartbreak feels recent again.I can hear a woman crying and screaming and jumping in the crowd at Pimlico Race Course, imploring officials not to euthanize her equine hero. He was a striking thoroughbred, a dark bay colt with a radish-shaped white patch on his head, a fledgling superstar who had won the Kentucky Derby by 6 ½ lengths two weeks earlier. I can see jockey Edgar Prado emerging from an embrace with trainer Michael Matz and telling owners Roy and Gretchen Jackson, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I can remember the 80-mile drive from Baltimore to rural Pennsylvania, winding through idyllic farmland before arriving at a hospital for large animals, where about a dozen television trucks were parked outside.Jockey Edgar Prado is consoled after Barbaro injured his right hind leg at the 2006 Preakness Stakes. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)It remains a story unlike any I’ve ever covered. It was upsetting and beautiful. The circumstances were odd, yet it spurred an inspiring level of humanity. After his right hind leg shattered, Barbaro lived for eight months until laminitis forced the Jacksons to end his suffering on Jan. 29, 2007.