One of my fondest childhood memories is being taken to Delaware Park, at that time one of the premier thoroughbred tracks in America, by my mother to watch morning workouts. She instilled in me an appreciation for the beauty, athleticism and intelligence of thoroughbreds and the sights, sounds and smells of those misty mornings have never left me.
Then much later in life I fell for a woman who is an excellent equestrienne and have loved watching her take her retired thoroughbred and other horses through their paces, including jumps over hurdles, hedges and water barriers using a reining technique pioneered by the legendary Jean Claude Racinet that keep horse and ride in balance without having to resort to the whip or spurs.
Because of all this I used to look forward to the Breeders Cup, an annual thoroughbred horse racing competition with more than $25 million in purse money. Same with the Triple Crown. But it has become obvious that the people who run this sport in America have only their best interests in mind. The horses are mere commodities to be raced and too often raced to death.
I began to sour on a sport that I have long loved because of what happened after the 2008 Kentucky Derby, an incredible race by any account.
Big Brown closed with an extraordinary burst of speed under picture-book blue skies to become the first horse to win the first leg of the Triple Crown from a 20th post position since 1929 and the first to win after only having run three races since 1919. And if that wasn’t enough, Eight Belles — the rare filly in a race dominated by colts — gave Big Brown a run for the roses awarded the winner since the first Derby way back in 1874.
Eight Belles crossed the wire nearly five lengths behind Big Brown, but moments later the champion filly fell without warning in front of her outrider as she was easing down. She had fractured both of her front ankles — extraordinarily in the same stride — and was euthanized as 157,000 Churchill Downs fans and tens of millions more at home, at bars and betting parlors looked on in stunned silence.
As it was, I had watched that year’s Triple Crown races with trepidation. Two years earlier, Barbaro, the Kentucky Derby winner, had broken down in the Preakness after shattering his right hind leg. He died several months later from the inevitable complications of such a severe injury.
The Barbaro tragedy prompted calls to adopt safer synthetic racing surfaces as opposed to traditional dirt ovals like Churchill, and there was the inevitable second-guessing over whether Eight Belles was done in by the track, which happened to be dry and fast, let alone whether she should have been competing against colts.
Eight Belles had never raced beyond a mile and one-sixteenth in her prior nine starts. The Derby is a mile and one-quarter. Only four fillies have ever won the Derby; the last was Winning Colors in 1988. And when Rags to Riches won the 2007 Belmont Stakes, the last leg of the Triple Crown, she was the first filly to capture the grueling mile and three-quarters race in 102 years.
There is an even larger issue that will never be addressed: Three-year-old horses — and the Triple Crown is open only to three year olds — are mere babies.
These horses may appear to be magnificent specimens but in reality are pedigreed freaks bred for speed who have extremely fragile and still developing bones that make them especially prone to what has happened to too many young horses. These include Barbaro and Pine Island, who had to be euthanized after the 2006 Breeders’ Cup Distaff race at Churchill when he suffered a dislocation of the left front fetlock.
There is a culture in horse racing in America that rewards those who seek any means, legal and otherwise, to get an edge. When illegal drug use goes undetected, trainers walk away with the winnings and an enhanced reputation. But when they are caught, they are all too often handed punishments that are in name only. Their horses still run and their stables still operate, usually under the name of a trusted assistant.
That is why it was so refreshing to read this week that New York racing authorities have revoked the license of Richard Dutrow Jr., who not coincidentally was the trainer of Big Brown when he won the Derby, for 10 years. Dutrow was cited for a variety of infractions ranging from hiding workouts of his horses to using powerful painkillers on horses he ultimately sent out to race. Other states are likely to follow suit, and for all intents and purposes the career of one of thoroughbred racing’s more controversial and successful horsemen is over.
Meanwhile, it is long past time to go to the safer racing surfaces widely used in Europe and already adopted by many equestrian venues, and otherwise clean up thoroughbred racing. It is long past time to stop racing three-year-olds into early graves. And it is long past time to stop giving trainers wrist slaps for illegally drugging their horses.
But all of that, despite the sanctions against Dutrow, is wishful thinking in a sport is awash with big money, outsized stud fees and enormous egos.