Yesterday I watched the derby, as I do every year. Steeped in tradition, it’s an event like no other. I watched the horses do their pre race parade and wondered what kind of race it would be. Did Big Brown have the power that they said he did? Would the race be accident and injury free. A few minutes later I had my answer. Yes Big Brown was everything they’d touted and more. I couldn’t help but make a correlation between him and Barbaro. Unfortunately, Eight Belles, the only filly in the race and one of the crowd favorites fell victim to horse racing’s curse. After finishing second, she collapsed on the track with two broken front legs. Both compound fractures and not a hope of surviving it. Much like Barbaro and hundreds of horses a year she literally gave her life for our enjoyment.
To me, it seems as though the industry will soon have to take a good hard look in the mirror. Bred for speed over stamina, many of these horses are running on legs as fragile as glass. By the age of 3 years old they’re expected to race, putting thousands of pounds of weight on the bones in their legs. If this trend continues, more horses are going to needlessly die.
The most recent quick fix for this has been the introduction of artificial surfaces, poly-tracks if you will. I don’t believe that changing the track surface alone will solve the crises facing the industry as a whole. More needs to be done, including, in my opinion changing the derby from 3 year olds to 4 year olds. Whose to say that extra year of training wouldn’t make all the difference in the world?
As I begin my next story, or should I say revisit a story started and filed away, I’ll be pondering the derby, Preakness stakes and Belmont for some time to come.
