While we were at the "beach" last week (a perfectly serviceable sandy oceanfront surface, Angelo's snotty protestations aside), we discussed watching the Kentucky Derby. Circumstances - meaning She Who Shall Not Be Named's ongoing fascination with getting pummeled by surf - kept us away from the TV, which turns out to have been just as well:
Big Brown was pulling away from the field, accelerating with every powerful stride toward the finish line in the Kentucky Derby. The crowd of 157,770 was on its feet and cheering as the big, unbeaten, muscular bay crossed the line first, 4 3/4 lengths ahead of the filly Eight Belles.
Trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. was still celebrating, along with thousands of happy bettors, as Big Brown and the 19 other horses in Saturday's race galloped out around the first turn at Churchill Downs.
It took a few minutes to sink in, but anyone watching those horses soon realized that one of them had fallen to the track.
"It's the filly," someone whispered. She went down about a quarter mile past the finish line.
In just a few minutes, the joy of the Derby and the promise of a new Triple Crown season were upended when Eight Belles was euthanized by injection on the track.
She had broken both front ankles and could not be saved.
[...]
Dr. Larry Bramlage, the Derby's on-call veterinarian, said the filly's injuries were too severe to even attempt to move her off the track."She didn't have a front leg to stand on to be splinted and hauled off in the ambulance, so she was euthanized," Bramlage said.
Trainer Larry Jones paid tribute to his fallen filly saying, "She ran the race of her life."
Apparently so.
I'm not going to get all bunged up about another (the fourth high profile racing death in the last two years) dead horse, seeing as how I: 1) eat meat; 2) take my kid to the zoo, and 3) just last week went fishing with The Father in Law. But remind me again how horse racing is different from the Iditarod or greyhound racing or any other borderline civilized animal sport? Is it the veneer of respectability afforded by millionaire owners? The venerable tradition of races like the Derby? Thoroughbreds are prettier than greyhounds? The relatively low mortality rate?
Horse always tastes a little gamy?
Ah well. This will cease to be a story once the Preakness rolls around.
Is it much different than pro football players who suffer health issues from all of the physical abuse and/or steroid use? Oh yeah, they compete by choice. (I just had a funny thought: Imagine if they had euthanized Joe Theismann after his nasty break!)
I ate a lot of horse in France a few years ago. Yummy yummy stuff. Lean like venison, but not nearly as gamy. If we could all get past the stigma associated with eating horse meat, I’d be a happy guy.