Roy Exum
I’ve spent enough mornings on the backside of a race track, just as the slight chill of dawn makes a thoroughbred dance in such a delightful way on its way from the barn for a workout, to know these spectacular athletes love to run.
So when a horse goes down, like the beautiful filly Eight Belles did late Saturday afternoon at the finish line of the Kentucky Derby, the only solace I can find is in the fact that when her front ankles buckled and broke, the horse itself was doing what she wanted most to do in the whole wide world.
Maybe that sounds crass, or even a bit cheap, but don’t look for me to be among those who this week will call for horse racing to be victimized by a federal investigation, hounded by animal rights activists or cast in any lesser light than one of the most glorious and wonderful sports known to mankind.
Admittedly, the incident spoiled for me a magnificent run by Big Brown, the favorite who won in such a fashion there is now hope the brawny winner will make a go at becoming the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed turned the trick in 1978.
As a matter of fact, when Eight Belles passed the wire just four lengths or so behind the favorite for a clear second-place finish, I was tremendously thrilled because the thinking in the thoroughbred industry forever has been a filly can’t stand up for a mile-and-a-quarter like the boys can. This was the first time a female had been brought to post in the big race since 1999 and she had shown such heart down the stretch.
There was no way the horse was abused in any way. If you could see how these beautiful animals are trained and coddled and prepared for the track, you would realize that the reason for such tragedy lies instead in the fact they may now be over-bred, that modern science and a myriad of other bio-technical forces have created perhaps such an athlete where “something has to give.”
We know that steroids create more much mass in humans. We know that “super foods” will make a chicken or a heifer grow at a much accelerated rate. As charges of doping have tainted baseball, cycling and the Olympics, perhaps we now put these horses in such harms’ way we see breakdowns like the one on Friday at Churchill Downs where, in an early race, a little-known racer named Chelokee dislocated an ankle.
Eight Belles was named after the summer home of artist N.C. Wyeth, the name originally taken from a Winslow Homer painting and the “e” added to “Bells” because it lent a feminine effect, but, again, I’d stake an entry fee in a bet the horse was not abused and, for the record, a horse breaking both ankles after such a run is almost unheard of in thoroughbred racing.
Years ago there was a magnificent animal named Black Gold that won the 1924 Kentucky Derby. While the story is rich, when Black Gold broke a leg several years later at Louisiana Downs, there was such mourning they let the schools out in New Orleans so the kids could go to the funeral. The horse was buried in the infield at the track and a beautiful marker stands there to this day.
Black Gold came out of Oklahoma and was quite a hero. What makes it special is that not until Oklahoma earned statehood in 1907 (the same year Black Gold’s mother was born) was Black Gold even eligible to run in the Kentucky Derby. Another barrier was that Black Gold, named for what the Indians called what came from those early oil gushers, was owned by a full-blooded Osage Indian named Rosa Magnet Hoots.
Earlier in 1924, Congress passed the Snyder Act, which made all the Indians driven there during the “Trail of Tears” actual citizens of the United States, so the widow Hoots was barely able to enter the horse in what was the 50th Run for the Roses.
The story soured considerably when Black Gold grew older. The plan was to put the captivating horse out to stud, but Black Gold came up sterile. So for whatever reason, be it greed or pride or the fact the racing world adored the feisty horse, they kept racing him.
He won, too, until he developed a quarter crack, which is a split hoof, but his trainer, who was either stupid or crazy or sadistic or – most probably – a combination of the three, continued to push the Indian horse.
Finally came that day at the Louisiana Fairgrounds when his jockey heard Black Gold’s leg break and then stayed in the irons, tears streaming down his face, as the great champion snapped the reins to finish the race on three legs.
Well, that is what makes “the sport of kings” like no other. And Sunday, as I mourned the loss of Eight Belles, I knew the filly was up there somewhere playing tag with Barbaro and Ruffian and an Indian horse named Black Gold.
royexum@aol.com