Of Racing Horses ...

Two great pieces on the horse racing industry in the wake of the death of Eight Belles at last week's Ketucky Derby:

Jim Squires in the New York Times earlier this week:

THE RAIL
So Where Does the Horse Racing Industry Go From Here?

By JIM SQUIRES

If human athletes were euthanized on television every time one broke a leg or a neck in an accident, the N.F.L., Nascar and Olympic skiing would be out of business.

Unless the thoroughbred industry stops demoralizing TV audiences with tragic endings to its most important and widely watched races, it will continue to make public enemies and slide further into oblivion.

Already its critics have seized on the breakdown of Eight Belles after the Kentucky Derby as evidence that the sport is a cruel and inhumane endeavor that should be curtailed or outlawed. And who can blame them? The sight of a beautiful animal ending up like Eight Belles is emotionally disturbing enough to justify almost any angry outburst, reasoned or not.

Believe me, no one is more disturbed or hurt by it than the people who raise horses and train them. People like Larry and Cindy Jones are not into horse training for money or fame. They are animal lovers, as attached to horses in their care as the average citizen is to a pet dog or cat. The amount of hands-on care and attention horses demand rivals that required by your children. That comparison — that they are a lot like our children — is at the root of this problem.

Horses, especially thoroughbreds, are constantly at risk. Watching a foal run behind its mother in a paddock hours after being born is not unlike watching your 3-year-old running headlong down the sidewalk toward the street after breaking away from your handhold. Watching a herd of yearlings racing recklessly across your pasture bucking and kicking at one another is not unlike watching your teenager leave in a car driven by a 16-year-old with a lead foot and the attention span of a flashbulb.

In either case, there is not much you can do about it but hold your breath.

Horses break their legs running across pastures with no one on their backs. Whether wild or domesticated, they race with one another and often try so hard they hurt themselves. They run through fences. They kick each other regularly, often breaking their own legs and those of others. They, too, have to be euthanized. Horses who never saw a racetrack in their lives founder regularly from mysterious causes and end up like Barbaro.

They develop colic and die regularly in our barns, in our trailers on the way to clinics, on operating tables after they get there, and sometimes even after they return home with $30,000 medical bills. Foals are frequently born dead. Mares often die trying to give birth. In short, losing animals is an integral part of raising them. Breeders, owners and trainers spend a great deal of time in emergency rooms and disposing of carcasses. People just don’t see it on television.

Still, there is something to the complaint that the horses we raise are not as sound as they used to be. The thoroughbred horse is one of the most fragile creatures on earth, an animal with a heart and a metabolism too powerful for his bones, digestive and respiratory systems, one too heavy and too strong for the structure supporting it.

That condition has taken decades of evolution. I don’t know what to do about it, except try to breed better ones to reverse the trend. The concern about the safety of our racetracks is also legitimate. People are trying to do something about that. It is indisputable that more catastrophic injuries occur on dirt surfaces — too often on the pitifully few days that the world is paying attention to our sport.

We can either make our tracks safer or continue to shock and dismay our audience and pay the consequences.

It’s also true that American thoroughbred racing demands more of its animals at an earlier age than other countries’ systems do. The breakdowns that dismay the public invariably occur in the 2- and 3- and 4-year-old races, to animals that have for the most part been in training since they were 18 months old. Barbaro was a 3-year-old running in the Preakness. Two fillies who broke down at Churchill Downs before Breeders’ Cup cameras a couple of years back were 4-year-old mares. A lot of these injuries occur because the bones are already weak from the stress of persistent training long before their skeletal structures were mature enough.

Why do we do this? Because we are always in a hurry to make our fame and fortune, whether we are raising animals, trading stocks, pioneering software or driving to the corner grocery. In my life I have seldom heard anyone say, “Don’t go so fast, no need to hurry.” And in horse racing, it’s almost never the trainer who is in a hurry. Certainly not trainers like Larry and Cindy Jones or Michael Matz, whose horses have suffered spectacular injuries before worldwide audiences. It is usually the owners who are in a hurry, although there is no reason to believe this was the case with Barbaro or Eight Belles.

It may take a long time before we learn to raise more durable thoroughbreds, restrain greed or slow down the human rush to self-destruction. But there are things that can and should be done. We can quit putting so much pressure on the young horses. Instead of being raced eight or nine times by the time the Triple Crown rolls around, maybe we can get by with three or four. Big Brown and Curlin certainly did.

We can also shift the focus of veterinary medicine. Medications that mask injuries and weaknesses must be controlled strictly and uniformly in all racing jurisdictions, and regulators should be adequately funded by the industry if government cannot do so. We should quit trying to quick-cure problems in time for the race.

And why can’t we can quit pushing horses into the gate on television and whipping them to make them run? If the trainer can’t train his horse to go in the gate and the gate workers can’t put it in there without force, scratch him. Usually there is a reason a horse does not want to go in there. And usually the horses that want to run don’t have to be whipped. Beating a horse during a race and having it break down under the rider and lose its life is no way to build public support and attract new owners to this sport.

When Dale Earnhardt crashed into a wall on television and died, there was no outcry to ban auto racing, only to make the cars safer if possible.

The thoroughbred horse is one of God’s most magnificent and willing creatures, and unfortunately, self-destructive enough by nature. They don’t need all this help from those of us who love them.

Jim Squires has bred five graded stakes winners, including the 2001 Derby champion Monarchos.



Philadelphia Inquirer:
Death of Eight Belles strikes a sensitivity chord with many fans and observers

By MIKE JENSEN
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Linda Hanna remembers how it was when the great filly Ruffian died after her injuries suffered in a match race in 1975.

"She had all sorts of fans - truck drivers, grandmothers, nuns and Girl Scouts," said Hanna, a professor at West Chester University and the author of a new book titled "Barbaro, Smarty Jones & Ruffian, The People's Horses." "A lot of those people have never looked at another race again."

Is the sport of thoroughbred racing back at a similar juncture? In the days since the filly Eight Belles died after finishing second in Saturday's Kentucky Derby, her death has overshadowed the romp of the winner, Big Brown, a legitimate threat to win the first Triple Crown in 30 years.

Track regulars know that horses break down, but even many of them admit to being traumatized by what they saw. And the casual fan who tunes in a couple of times a year obviously doesn't do it to see a filly go down after the finish of the Derby, to be euthanized minutes later, before the telecast cuts to the winner's circle.

The issues being raised this week all came up after 2006 Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro broke down two weeks later in the Preakness - but Barbaro wasn't put down on the track at Pimlico. So the episode still offered some hope.

On Sunday, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, seeking the suspension of Eight Belles jockey Gabriel Saez, faxed a letter to Kentucky's racing authority contending the filly was "doubtlessly injured before the finish" and asking that Saez not be allowed to ride while the horse's death is investigated.

This week, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals issued a more generic condemnation, stating that the sport is no different from other forms of entertainment where animals are forced to perform, "often times in stressful and inhumane conditions. These include being raced too young before reaching physical maturity, being raced excessively, being forced to run on hard or slippery surfaces, or being injected with drugs to enhance performance."

Of the fans who were pulled in by the feel-good Smarty Jones and Afleet Alex stories and stayed tuned to Barbaro's saga, some are saying they can't keep following the sport, whatever the circumstances of the horse's death. Owners and trainers say the Smarty and Barbaro fans don't have much to do with their industry, and certainly don't sustain it economically.

As for those who call for the abolition of the sport: "I don't think they understand what thoroughbreds are bred for," Hanna said.

Larry Jones, the trainer of Eight Belles, fired back at PETA. He said of PETA's call for a suspension of the jockey: "I think it's really and truly the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. . . . When that started with PETA, I feel like maybe their heart was in the right place. I think maybe they were genuinely concerned. But now that I am kind of becoming the same expert on PETA that they are on horse racing - which isn't great, but enough to get my foot in my mouth, which (is) where they keep theirs most of the time. ..."

"I hate the fact that they're using this to be a fund-raiser for them," Jones said of PETA's attack.

Rick Porter, the owner of Eight Belles, said a preliminary autopsy concluded that Eight Belles broke down because of the fractures in her legs.

"It was not an aneurysm," Porter said. "It didn't have anything to do with the heart."

But many fans weren't waiting for autopsy results to express their dismay.

"I will never ever ever ever watch another horse race or read any articles about same," e-mailed an Philadelphia Inquirer reader named Sharon Breen on Sunday morning. "It seems to me that this is an absolutely cruel sport for these magnificent animals. ... Have these things always happened and I just didn't know about them? I only started paying any attention when Smarty ran."

Breen, who lives in Montgomeryville, Pa., continued: "Believe me, I just lost all interest. God bless these horses who have no idea what jeopardy they are in while trying to please their jockeys/owners/trainers. Horrible!!!!! At least football players make their own choices - these horses are slaves in my opinion."

Alex Brown, currently exercising horses for top trainer Steve Asmussen at Woodbine outside Toronto, maintains the Web site that offered daily medical updates on Barbaro before the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner was put down. The Web site has continued with a sizable online community checking in every day.

"I see a lot of anger. I try to eliminate any of the rhetoric that is clearly looking to ban racing, because this is a horse-racing Web site," Brown said Tuesday. "The rest of the rhetoric is all fair game. Certainly the rhetoric that is trying to improve areas of horse racing, that I'm all for."

Brown doesn't think the jockey was in any way responsible for the death of Eight Belles, but he said this country needs to follow Europe's lead and adopt more stringent whip rules, limiting the number of times a jockey can use a whip in a race.

Brown also said: "I just think this idea of making the racetracks as fast as you can on big race days, that's something that's easy for us to make a conscious effort not to do. Every racetrack does it for its major stakes."

In fact, the sport has been experimenting with all sorts of changes. Last year, California banned dirt tracks after a rash of breakdowns. The jury remains out on the effects of artificial surfaces. Many trainers have come out against them.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania and Delaware have banned steroids. Many feel this is a significant advance, but also suggest that it is resulting in short fields in Delaware in particular since trainers in states that allow steroids would be reluctant to ship their horses to a state where it is banned.

These changes illustrate how specific jurisdictions can enact changes, but it is difficult to do industry-wide.

Small measures already have been taken. Brown said a group that gathers at his Web site, AlexBrownracing.com, saved a racehorse from the kill pen at the New Holland Auction this week, raising the money in the name of Eight Belles.

"My personal goal would be something as horrible as this incident is, it's not for naught," Brown said. "I think it's important that it doesn't become business as usual in the next week."