by Schuyler Bates - May 5, 2008
I don't follow horse racing all that much, and I'm not that interested in it. Though I was 1 of the 11 people that thought Seabiscuit was a good movie, and I was quite moved at the fairly lame The Horse Whisperer. So my interest in horse racing is pretty limited to, well, the horses, I guess. As it should be.
But I do make a point to watch The Kentucky Derby every year. So this 1st Saturday in May found me propped in front of the TV looking at Billy Bush manning the red carpet and watching the handlers get the horses into the gates and hearing myself say what I say every 1st Saturday in May, invariably: "Don't let anything happen to the horses. Don't let anything happen to the horses."
It was a great race, if somewhat predictable. Big Brown cruised till the last quarter and powered his way well past the field for a convincing win. I mean, he didn't even look winded, like he could have run another lap. Very impressive.
What wasn't predictable was who came in 2nd, a young filly named Eight Belles. She ran hard, but Big Brown was just too much for her, and the crowd went nuts.
But when the camera panned over to what looked like a horse down, my heart sank, my stomach ached, and my head hurt. The commentators confirmed that indeed a horse was down, and that it was Eight Belles. But they didn't have any information yet.
"Maybe she's just tired," I told myself. "Maybe she just laid down for a quick rest after having given everything she had." That's when I saw Big Brown buck his jockey off. Something had clearly spooked him.
As we all know now, she wasn't tired and taking a nap; she'd broken both her front ankles and had to be put down because recovery from such injuries is remote at best and she was in excruciating pain. I think that's what spooked Big Brown. He knew. I don't know how he knew, but he knew. It's one of the saddest things I've ever seen in sports. It was heartbreaking, and it all happened so fast.
The media is doing what it does best as usual yet again: assigning blame. Are owners breeding their horses with too much emphasis on size as opposed to proportion? Some experts are asserting that Eight Belles' massive body (for a filly) was just too much for her smallish lower legs. Are we racing them too young? Should the track be that synthetic stuff that's supposed to be easier on horses (though I don't see how it could be)? Is horse racing a cruel sport?
I suppose we could put this case on the fast track and get congress involved.
I'm the worst sort of sap when it comes to animals. I like my dogs more than I like most people, and I don't even like my dogs. But horses are so noble and intuitive. They've carried us all over the world, helped us cultivate the earth, then harvest its bounty, fought wars just or unjust, helped found a nation and tame the wild.
I know: over-romanticized bullshit. I don't care. It's just that when you've got a congress that thinks tax rebates are not the same thing as tax cuts, a supreme court that thinks it's okay for a cop to search your car if you didn't come to a complete stop at a 4-way, and an insane retard in The White House prosecuting 2 wars seemingly with Dungeons&Dragons dice and a game of Battleship, telling the world that the blame for the food shortage on our planet lies solely at the feet of the emerging Indian middle class, is it too much to ask for a happy ending every once in a-fucking-while? Especially when you consider that George more than likely thought he was talking about Native Americans at the time.
So the best I can do to console myself is to remember that these horses absolutely love to run, and that Eight Belles, as tragic as it is, died doing what she loved to do, what she was meant to do. Bye, Eight Belles. Tell Barbaro we said, "Hey."
Schuyler Bates is a former snowboarder who'd like to make enough $$ to be a stay-at-home-drunk. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama and rarely blogs at The Outer Sanctum.