Here is an article by Jane Smiley that may be of interest to some.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/sports/othersports/04smiley.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Apologies if it was posted elsewhere.
[QUOTE=LMH;3189057]
Here is an article by Jane Smiley that may be of interest to some.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/sports/othersports/04smiley.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Apologies if it was posted elsewhere.[/QUOTE]
Jane Smiley!!! That’s rich considering the whole Waterwheel story. Where’s that roll eyes icon?
From Jane Smiley:
“This is what we saw in Eight Belles: she was more resolute and competitive than was good for her, and she literally ran herself to death. When the race was finished, every part of her was exhausted, including, I am sure, the support apparatus of ligaments and tendons that were keeping her bones together. She probably stumbled and broke one ankle, then stepped hard on the other and broke that one. Then she fell.”
So Jane’s a vet now or maybe just an expert interpreter of videotape? Sheesh.
[QUOTE=Laurierace;3189035]
They weren’t blocking the view so people wouldn’t see her reacting to the euthanasia, they blocked the view of her getting into the ambulance. That is hard for anyone to witness.[/QUOTE]
I hadn’t heard they made her get into an ambulance. How in the world did that happen?
I think Laurie means getting the body onto the ambulance…
[QUOTE=lcw579;3189209]
I think Laurie means getting the body onto the ambulance…[/QUOTE]
Exactly, no one needed to see that.
Ah. That makes more sense - blocking the view of the body being put into the ambulance.
I’m sure Shakespeare, too, got some of the particulars wrong when he wrote Julius Caesar. But he captured the essence of what happened the morning Caesar fell and died in the Roman Senate, and abstracted it so well that two millennia after the event, and several centuries after his rendition, we all appreciate the dynamics of the context and the day in a way that an accurate journalistic blow-by-blow (with autopsy results at eleven) never could have.
In which rendition better lies the truth?
What would Caesar say, if he were able to look back and comment?
What would Eight Belles?
(FWIW, my political sympathies were with Caesar’s assassins, both before and after reading Shakespeare’s account, but that doesn’t really go to the literary merit, or essential human resonance of his rendition.)
The whole thing
As if she really gives a…
So Young, So Fast, And Oh So Very Strong
By JANE SMILEY
Published: May 4, 2008
Anyone who watched the Kentucky Derby on Saturday had to feel saddened and
amazed ‹ saddened, of course, by the death of the filly Eight Belles and
amazed by the power of the winner, Big Brown. As a longtime very ambivalent
fan of horse racing and a lover of thoroughbreds, I can¹t help seeing what
happened as a kind of paradigm of Thoroughbredness, if you want to call it
that.
I have a friend who trains a jumper who is a relative of Eight Belles, a son
of her grandsire, Unbridled. When my friend got the horse, a woman he knows,
a steward at Santa Anita, told him to watch out, because Unbridleds tend to
be unsound and fearless, and my friend has found this to be the case. Where
most horses have at least some caution, my friend¹s horse will try anything.
His mental toughness and competitiveness always take over, no matter what
the circumstances.
This is what we saw in Eight Belles: she was more resolute and competitive
than was good for her, and she literally ran herself to death. When the race
was finished, every part of her was exhausted, including, I am sure, the
support apparatus of ligaments and tendons that were keeping her bones
together. She probably stumbled and broke one ankle, then stepped hard on
the other and broke that one. Then she fell.
But Big Brown was the other half of the equation. Big Brown looks to be a
truly exceptional horse ‹ exceptionally strong and exceptionally
competitive, possibly the Secretariat of our day. When Eight Belles decided
she wasn¹t going to give up, she risked herself more than she would have
with a lesser horse ‹ and in general, male horses are stronger than female
horses, which is why so few fillies run in the Derby.
Some people think there should be no horse racing. Certainly, horse racing
as a spectator sport is staggering under the weight of these recent horrors
‹ Barbaro, and now this. But as I¹ve written elsewhere, without horse
racing, there would be no thoroughbreds as we know them, and there is
nothing like them. The thoroughbreds I have bred and trained and now ride,
modest specimens all, are athletic, game and eager, full of energy and
intelligence. Beautiful, too.
It is not racing per se that is cruel, it is American racing as it has been,
on dirt tracks at continuous high speeds, for lots of money. Horses in
Europe, who run on the turf and only exert themselves all out at the end of
fairly long races, do not break down as frequently as American horses on
American tracks. American horses bred like European horses, that run in
races on the grass, also break down less. American horses have been expected
to start racing early and to go fast from the post to the wire, because the
people in the grandstands can see the whole race and like plenty of speed.
Fortunately, American racing authorities are finally waking up to the
industrywide damage that a high injury rate does, and American racetracks
are in the process of changing their racing surfaces from dirt to something
called polytrack that is easier on the horses and rather similar to turf.
Although horsemen complain because the surface is unfamiliar, a friend of a
friend I know at Hollywood Park said recently that her job had changed ‹ and
her job is doing the paperwork on horses injured at the track. She says that
she did 75 to 80 percent less paperwork now; that is the difference, for the
better, in the injury rate in Southern California since the switch to
polytrack. The track at Churchill Downs is still dirt. The difference in the
surface means that breeders have to breed a different style of horse, too:
sturdier horses with a different action, like European horses.
It is possible, though, that Eight Belles would have run herself to death on
any surface. We all know people who cannot admit defeat, and horses can be
the same. We all know people who simply defy their own weaknesses and go on.
I see Eight Belles¹s death as heroic in that sense ‹ stubborn and foolish,
shocking and tragic, but not, in the end, an accident. I think the filly¹s
courage deserves respect, not pity.
Jane Smiley, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is author of ³Horse
Heaven² and many other novels.
Please forgive me if someone actually did mention this. I could not tell.
I went through 4 pages of one post after another of: “omg!!! she broke both front ankles!!!”, 3 more of “im crying my eyes out!!” and “no more watching races for me!!”…
And couldn’t take the weeping & wailing & belaboring-the-obvious drama anymore, and stopped reading.
So I don’t know if this has been brought up yet, or not but…
…My input is this:
How many of you are aware that her trainer exercised her regularly, and that he weighed 200 pounds? Or did I hear that wrong?
Does anyone else find that a bit excessive to be putting on a 3yo in the mornings?
That said, I feel for him. He obviously loved her. But I have to wonder about the wisdom of putting that much weight on young tendons & bones in high-speed workouts.
I’m glad you brought that up Horse…I was thinking the same thing…the guy is HUGE to be exercising those babies…he was not only galloping her but also breezing her…if I was an owner of a horse in that stable I would be more than a little concerned with him swinging a leg over my horse. She was not the only one he was getting on…and did I hear right that this same trainer had another one break down the week before???
He did the same thing with Hard Spun.
Anyone see that national news segment on Eight Belles tonite? I think it was ABC that carried it.
The owner of Eight Belles- a non-horse man- cardealer somewhere on the east coast, called her a part of his family- 24 hours after her untimely death- while smiling into the camera- clearly no clue…
The horse was raced I believe 10 times before and did not have as much rest as the winner - who had a 6 week respite before this race. The exerciser- well that speaks for itself. My question is: if there is a vet on this board reading this: did the ligaments most likely fail first? if so- could they have had many tiny tears in them that made them unstable to begin with? Would that have shown up as slight puffiness before?
Insane stuff- if you ask me - and I surely hope our national advertisers take a long hard look at the practices of televising a national event like this for the whole family to see- where a young-gorgeous horse has to be put down - right there and then…this is as bad or worse than eventing…at least they don’t get that level of media coverage and the horses are trained - mature and have a chance to survive. This in my mind is using 10 year old boys and girls to run marathons and whip them over the finish line…
[QUOTE=vineyridge;3188753]
California had a bunch of breakdowns last year and the year before, so the Cal Racing authorities mandated that all Cal tracks be converted to synthetic and it is currently happening.
Santa Anita, with synthetic, was a disaster area this spring, as the track owners hadn’t been willing to put enough money into preparation before the installation of the new stuff, and the drainage didn’t work.
Back in the early days of racing in the mid 1800s, races consisted of 4 mile heats. A horse had to win multiple heats to actually be the race winner. This was true in the US AND in Europe.
As we have lessened the stamina requirements and gone from almost exclusively turf to almost exclusively dirt sprints, breeders may have changed their emphasis from longevity on the race course to precocious speed and straight to the breeding shed for classics winners, many of whom seem to barely survive the three triple crown races.
As I said in an earlier post, the breeder should never had put that particular mare to that particular sire if s/he cared about producing a sound animal. The odds against it were very high.[/QUOTE]
Great point! And I agree!
[QUOTE=shawneeAcres;3187069]
Secondly, all of you that want to stop watching that is fine. I too did not like what happened, it saddened and sickened us to see that filly lying there, yet she was swiftly attended to, diagnosed and euthanized. One thing racing has over ALL other equine sports is absolutely the best and fastest veterinary care available. It was IMMEDIATE that they attended to her. As someone else said a far better fate than what many ex-racers face! I do not understand the mentality that becuase a horse breaks down in racing,e venting or any other horse sport that we should cease that sport. If that DOES occur then there is not going to be a logical reason for horses to remain in our country, they aren’t used for work, except in very limited places, and they aren’t used for meat. They really are not companion animals like dogs or cats, so then what reason to feed, house and care for such a very large and expensive creature??? they exist SOLELY for sport, period. Our responsibility is to do our BEST to properly prepare and condition them, ride them, train them and compete them as fairly as we can. Accidents ARE going to happen, and the best we can do is swiftly attend to that animal and make the humane decision to euthanize when needed. And then to ELARN from the incident and try and improve things, but NOT to bash the sport altogether for one incident. It happens, and guess what, so do car wrecks and airline catastrophes. The hrose doesn’t have a say in what he is used for, but if he wasn’t usd for sport, he wouldn’t exist in our culture during this day and age.[/QUOTE]
Thank you for saying what I have been thinking so clearly.
Interesting segment…nothing we haven’t heard before, but nonetheless it’s worth watching. It does show a short clip of Eight Belles falling, though, so don’t watch if you don’t want to see that.
http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&vid=4a6d0e96-c9f0-4684-9abf-f3e0a5b2ec75
Found this link to an 8 minute interview with Belle’s trainer Jones. She was put down before he was even able to get to her. The video blacks out around the 5 minute mark for a few seconds but the video does start back up again.
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=7674645
And there it is :no:
I was wondering when weight would come up.
Maybe it is a bit much for a heavier person to be on the horse during workouts but then the jock who can’t be over, what 116, should be nothing for the horse to carry in a race (and those jocks suffer greatly to maintain that weight because no one wants to put more weight on the horses when they race???).
Could the weight have started something? Possibly but then she woulda broken down before the end of the race most likely. But it’s not like this was her first race or the first time her trainer rode her. Plus, many exercise riders are heavier than one would think. Some jocks also exercise but many barns have riders specificically for exercising because they do want the horse to carry more weight to build muscle and stamina.
You know, when you make such a stunning error of fact it really reduces the weight your other comments may carry. 3 year old Colts carry 126. Fillies 121 in non-handicap stakes races. Basic knowledge of racing.
Madeline, the jockeys themselves don’t weigh 121 or 126.
