Sports Frog

The following is from Swamper Bensell. Recently I met up with Bensell at Keeneland, Lexington's ractrack, and quickly discerned that horse racing is a passion of his. He and his friends spoke knowingly about trainers, jockeys and traning sessions. Therefore, I thought it fitting that he offer up a post that was a bit more complete than has been in the Swamp. With that, Bensell:

"My family owns thoroughbreds. One of my uncles has been involved in the business since before I was born. He is a smalltime breeder, never having more than a dozen mares at a time (he owns 3 currently). My brother no longer owns any thoroughbreds, but he is an assistant manager at a farm that breeds, sells and races horses (they own about 25 mares). He ran about a dozen horses in his name in the 1990s and 2 of them died in racing related accidents. I have been a fan of horse racing all of my life, and the safety of the horse (and jockey) are of paramount importance to me.

But before I go into my thoughts and feelings, allow me to highlight Andy Beyer's piece in the Washington Post from today:

When Eight Belles broke down and was euthanized after finishing second in the Kentucky Derby, her death provoked a predictable outcry about the cruelty of the sport.

The filly's fate was a bigger story than Big Brown's victory, even though the undefeated colt appears poised to become the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years. Sunday's New York Times sports pages reflected the popular reaction. A photo of the filly, lying on the track, was spread across the first sports page; a column described the sport as "brutal;" published e-mails branded it as inhumane, abusive, unethical and barbaric.

The reaction of casual fans, who may watch only a few races a year, was intense because the memory of Barbaro's breakdown in the 2006 Preakness is fresh in everybody's mind. Many of those viewers probably remember the tragic deaths of Ruffian and Go for Wand, too.

As someone who loves the game, I would like to defend racing by explaining that such breakdowns are not an everyday occurrence. I could argue that racing has been terribly unlucky that so many catastrophic events have occurred in high-profile races seen by a nationwide television audience. The sport is not inhumane. It is not brutal. It is not barbaric.

But Eight Belles was a tragic manifestation of a problem that is more pronounced every year. America's breeding industry is producing increasingly fragile thoroughbreds. They may not break down, but they have shorter and shorter racing careers before going to stud to beget even more fragile offspring.

The facts are irrefutable. In 1960, the average U.S. racehorse made 11.3 starts per year. The number has fallen almost every year, and now the average U.S. thoroughbred races a mere 6.3 times per year. Almost every trainer whose career spans the decades will acknowledge that thoroughbreds aren't as robust as they used to be.

There are at least two good explanations for this phenomenon. In earlier eras, most people bred horses in order to race them, and they had a stake in the animals' soundness. By contrast, modern commercial breeders produce horses in order to sell them, and if those horses are unsound, they become somebody else's problem. Because buyers want horses with speed, breeders have filled the thoroughbred species with the genes of fast but unsound horses.

As this change in the breeding world took place, the sport was allowing the use of pain-killers and other medications that are forbidden in most other countries. They allow infirm horses to achieve success, go to stud and pass on their infirmities to the next generation.

If you want a very good summary of the injury, and how it happened, go to drf.com and read Glenye Cain Oakford's article entitled "Eight Belles's injury rare and baffling." Oakford quotes Larry Bramlage, the vet who was at scene on Saturday:

"You'll see things like condylar fractures or sesamoid fractures in one leg, and as they start slowing down and their mind gets off of the competition, they'll become aware of the discomfort," Bramlage added when asked what injuries are most likely after the finish line. "An injury as they're pulling up is not terribly unheard of. The vast majority of injuries, however, don't manifest until they're cooling out, unless the horse becomes structurally unstable in some fashion. Then they start slowing down in the race. None of those scenarios fit here."

Bramlage said close examination of video shows Eight Belles's breakdown began when her right front leg failed.

"Two steps later, her left front gives way as well, and that's when she went down," he said. "She gets very asymmetric [uneven in stride] for about two steps, and then her left front fails."

Several friends of mine are good friends with Larry Jones, the trainer of Eight Belles, and another worked for him for a couple of years. They have all said he would never run a horse that was not 100%, and there is no reason to think that Eight Belles was anything but ready to run the race of her life. And that she did; she was the only horse gaining on Big Brown in the stretch. Hell, she was the only other horse in the picture at the end. She jogged out easy into the first turn; I went back and checked the dvr for any missteps and there were none. That is until her last couple of steps, when both front legs were shattered. There was no reason to believe that anything bad would happen, especially that far past the finish line.

Barbaro broke down just as the Preakness was starting. When Charismatic broke down in the 1999 Belmont Stakes, it was in the last few yards of the race. Go For Wand broke down just before the sixteenth pole in the 1990 Breeders Cup Distaff (my seats were directly in front of it - I can still see her get back up and try to finish the race). You don't expect anything to happen that far after the race is over, because it simply doesn't happen. The only injuries I've seen at that part of the track, after the race, were heat exhaustion issues. Those horses collapsed and had to be vanned off. That isn't a fatal occurrence very often, though it may well be a career ending one.

The point I'm trying to make is the jockey, Gabriel Saez, had no idea the filly was hurt until it was too late. I expect that groups like PETA will try and get mileage out of this tragedy, but to disparage the name of this 20 year old kid who did his best in his very first Kentucky Derby by calling for his suspension is absolutely appalling. Can thoroughbred racing improve safety? Yes. But to say it can happen overnight is ridiculous - even synthetic tracks only reduce the chances of injury. Synthetic tracks reduce fatalities, but the career-ending injury rate is remarkably similar when compared to the traditional dirt tracks.

Three are some good signs that the industry is addressing this problem already. While many commercial breeders are still focused on speed, there is a move away from the "2 years old in training" sales, where the youngsters are asked to work out under tack for 1/8th of a mile. There are now steroid tests at the sales, and the drug tests that the horse faces after a race are able to actually catch the cheaters. With the introduction of the Breeders Cup Marathon, a 1 ½ mile race on the dirt that will be run for the first time this year at Santa Anita (and the series of races organized to lead up to it), some of the focus is going not only to the traditional stamina-based sire lines but also to try and develop new ones. The introduction of synthetic tracks has allowed the "turf sires" offspring to move from the grass to the fake stuff fairly easily. This not only increases the stamina lines, but many tracks are transferring a style of running that has been mainly European to this point. The jockey's game plan has shifted to sitting back through out the early part of a race, then turning it into a calvary charge when they turn for home.

The bottom line is that there is always a chance of death in horse racing - when an animal that weighs over a thousand pounds runs at 35 MPH on an ankle the size of a small adult, there is a huge risk factor. Racing has been unlucky to have 2 high profile break downs in the last 6 Triple Crown events, since that is about the only time the general public pays attention to the industry.
In all honesty the average thoroughbred is safer on the track now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. And we'll leave the discussion of the dangers of retirement for another day..."