I've mentioned here before that I never quite grew out of my adolescent girl's love of horses, and so it still is. I find them extremely beautiful, and there's nothing I like so much as watching the three legs of the Triple Crown in the early spring. I love most of all the feast of horseflesh on TV; when else can I see such lovely creatures for such an extended period of time? And the history of horse racing has me enthralled as well. I told Sam yesterday, while watching the coverage of the race, that I love looking at historic portraits of winners of the past Derbies. The black and white photos of horses are especially evocative to me, and I could look at them for hours. Indeed, I even love to read books about famous Thoroughbreds, horses like Secretariat, Man-O-War, Citation, Seabiscuit, Native Dancer, Ruffian...etc. The list could go on for ages. I simply love everything about the horses, and the sport they are.
But you know by now, if you watched the race, or if you've keep up with news, that yesterday's Derby was both triumphant and hugely, deeply sad. If you don't know, here's the short of it: the filly in the race, the filly that took second in the race was put down right on the course immediately following the race. She was euthanized past the second turn, while a crowd of people cheered for the winner, Big Brown. The filly, Eight Belles, broke both of her front ankles, and though it's unclear how, what people keep saying is that horse racing is hard on the bodies of horses, and that this sometimes happens. And it does. The winner of the 2006 Kentucky Derby, Barbaro, broke down in the next race, the Preakness. And died, later, after much intensive vet care that simply could not save his life. Traditionally, a broken leg has always been a death sentence for horses. And so it was for Eight Belles.
It's hard to feel good about a sport that seems to be getting more and more fraught with these sorts of fatal injuries. From what I understand, it's a combination of factors. The horses are getting more fragile with increased inbreeding, and because of that, the hard dirt of most race courses is more dangerous. (There has been a movement to invent a better surface, a less dangerous one, and Arlington Park, Chicago's home course, has a synthetic track now, to try to prevent such injuries from happening.) Horses are less hardy now, there's no doubt about it. Past horses ran many more races each year, and with less trouble. Drugs may be part of the problem, allowing for the masking of such symptoms that might indicate troubled racing.
I don't know if there is a solution. I'd hate for the solution to be an end to all horse racing, but it's really hard to know about yesterday's breakdown without wanting to see an end to that kind of pain for horses. If you love them. One thing I think would be beneficial would be to space out the three legs of the Triple Crown. Would that have saved Eight Belles? No, of course not. But might it have saved Barbaro? Who can say? Of course, not all breakdowns happen around these three races. I don't understand the precise economics of horse racing, but to make money, a horse has to race. And I'm sure it has to race a certain amount of times during a year. Perhaps too often than what is good for a horse? I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer to any of this.
But as a fan of horses, and of racing, I can only say that what happened yesterday--and seeing the pictures and the video of the injury (NBC briefly showed video footage of the horse down on the track, before the equine ambulances moved in front of her so they could put her down, and I moaned to Sam, "She's down, oh she's down" and I knew that it was so very bad if she couldn't stand at all.)--well, it tests the boundaries of your love for such a thing. I loved the idea of that filly winning the race, and I loved that she came in second; I was more excited about that than Big Brown's win. To have it end so is nearly unbearable. Nearly unbearable.
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