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Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Thoroughbreds in U.S. get best care
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What most Americans never realize - while stricken by the drawn-out emotional saga of Barbaro or the crushing calamity of Eight Belles, caught on live television in one of our major sports’ traditional events - is that 55,000 horses were slaughtered in this country each year as late as 2004. That’s an approximate figure, and a large percentage of the victims are not racing thoroughbreds but, in many cases, somebody’s family playmate.
Naturally, when Eight Belles went down in the Kentucky Derby, animal lovers who arise from their slumber to leap to the fray in such highly publicized situations used this situation to reap every headline they could. A filly, racing against male horses, finishing second in the Kentucky Derby, then breaking down on camera — what an arousing target.
The folly of it is that no horse lives a better life than a racing thoroughbred. Pampered, petted, provided a carefully supervised diet, and bedded down in its own private suite each night.
The value of such equine royalty escalates with each visit to the winner’s circle. Then follows the after-race life of promise as a breeder. No animal could have been more patiently coddled than Eight Belles.
Now, would you care to hear the story of some thoroughbred classics that didn’t come to such a fairy tale end? Imagine, if you can, the winner of a Kentucky Derby coming to his end in a can supplying food on somebody’s table in Japan. It happened. Ferdinand won the Derby in 1986 with Bill Shoemaker on his back, then the Breeders’ Cup Classic the next year. Retired to stud, he was sold to a thoroughbred farm in Japan. He hadn’t been a successful sire in this country, so why was he expected to produce there? When he didn’t, Ferdinand was sold and came to his end in a slaughterhouse in 2002.
In 1978, there was no finer race horse in America than Exceller. Nor in Europe, where he won classic stakes, both on turf and dirt. In one race in this country, the Jockey Club Gold Cup, he beat both Affirmed and Seattle Slew, two Triple Crown champions, coming from 22 lengths off the lead. At Saratoga he has a place in the Racing Hall of Fame, but in Sweden he became a food item, slaughtered in 1997 when he failed as a sire.
In this country, such champions wind up in the Kentucky Horse Park, a kind of living museum. In Sweden, they wind up a victim of slaughter. And Exceller was a statuesque figure of a horse, but as I usually say, all race horses are things of beauty, surely not meant for dog or people food.
So the Belmont approaches and with it the anticipation of the first Triple Crown champion since Affirmed. Hovering over the sport, though, is still the memory of Eight Belles’ breakdown.
Big Brown has had no serious challenger, nothing to whip up the memory of Affirmed and Alydar, straining every fiber to cross the finish line first. Affirmed won the races but Alydar won the breeding crown, a star in the stallion barn. Sorrowfully, Eight Belles is gone, but her tragedy should take nothing away from Big Brown’s day in the sun.
To be honest, this is not one of the better crops of 3-year-olds, but were it not for Big Brown, it wouldn’t register. Probably the surest confirmation is that after the Kentucky Derby, only one other horse in that field chose to challenge Big Brown in the Preakness.
And I still look back at the moment of truth, when trainer Rick Dutrow strode so confidently to the board at the Derby drawing and chose the outside post with three other inside gates open.
