How a whiffed NFL field goal helped save this Kentucky Derby horse expert’s life

When former New York Giants’ placekicker Younghoe Koo utterly missed the ball On a field goal try in opposition to the New England Patriots final December, the broadcasters weren’t the one ones laughing.

Mark Toothaker, a stallion gross sales supervisor for Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, was on the sofa cracking up along with his spouse, Malory, concerning the whiffed field goal and consequential turnover.

Then, I felt one thing unusual.

“I felt a shock in my left arm, and then I never felt anything else. Had no pain, anything after that,” Toothaker stated.

He did not get up for 25 minutes and was informed on the hospital that he suffered a seizure.

Doctors additionally revealed the stunning information that he had a mind tumor the scale of a tennis ball.

Luckily, his spouse Malory is a nurse.

“Just happened at absolutely the right place if it had to happen,” Toothaker stated. “I could have died, I mean, I’m on the road all the time.”

The tumor was benign, and Toothaker was house from the hospital after a whirlwind 24 hours.

But as he prepares for this 12 months’s Kentucky Derby, the place he is hoping to be within the winner’s circle with Spendthrift’s horse, Further Ado, he nonetheless thinks about Koo, and the whiff that led to the tumor’s discovery.

Toothaker reached out to the kicker, who made the Pro Bowl and led the NFL in factors with Atlanta in 2020.

“I’d love to have him come to the races, or come visit Spendthrift,” Toothaker stated. “If he wants to go racing, we’ll go racing. If he wants to come out and see the seas and foals, it’d be my honor to come out and show him around this beautiful farm that we have here in Lexington, Kentucky.”