Eight Belles sounds an alarm
In a "feel good" year, horse racing can capture America's dreams with one good horse that symbolizes nobility. In a bad year, like this one, where the sport is already trying to recover from the disaster of Eight Belles and her gallant but ill-fated run in the Kentucky Derby, horse racing takes on an aura of pride, arrogance and even cruelty.
The trick — for enthusiasts — is to preserve the good years, while cleaning up the bad ones.
With Eight Belles being put down, there are cries that track surfaces need to be changed — perhaps even to synthetic turf designed, scientifically, for pounding hooves. Some are pushing even harder, saying that the modern racehorse, with its enormous lungs, muscle structure and spindly legs, is a freak of nature that is scripted to self-destruct. (And indeed, some horses do look like the toothpick-legged elephants in a Salvador Dali painting.)
In short, horse racing has reached a tipping point. It has been crippled by its own advances — not unlike steroids in baseball and all the controversy over "spoilers" and the size of gas tanks in the motor sports.
Protestations to the contrary, the American public knows that something is amiss when so many prized animals — worth millions of dollars — sustain injuries that cost them their lives. If horses were automobiles, the government would be on top of the problem in a heartbeat.
It's time for the sport of kings to show a little humility and right its own house.
Recent comments
I know it is an opinion editorial but does everyone really need to...
really now | May 6, 2008 at 7:41 p.m.
