I love horses and I love to watch the races of the Triple Crown every year. I hate to watch races where the horses get injured. It is part of the sport, I know, and we can expect it to happen, but I hate it when it could have been prevented. Apparently, Eight Belles should not have run in the Kentucky Derby. She came in second, broke both her ankles at the end of the race and was euthanized today.
Here is what Paul Moran wrote earlier this week:
Eight Belles Deserves Better
Where are the animal rights activists when you need them?
Eight Belles was entered in the 134th Kentucky Derby on Wednesday. Success would demand that she run 10 furlongs faster than 19 males. There is the most remote possibility that she will succeed, this covered by one of life’s immutable truths: Anything can happen in a horse race.
What is far more likely is that Eight Belles will be permanently scarred by the experience.
Three fillies have won the Derby, in 1915, Genuine Risk, Genuine Risk, in 1981, and Winning Colors, whose victory will mark its 20th anniversary on Saturday.
Regret, though she was generally unsound, was an extremely fast filly whose regularly defeated males. But Genuine Risk and Winning Colors were nothing like Eight Belles. Both were big, rugged fillies who competed against males on even physical terms. Winning Colors defeated males in the Santa Anita Derby before the Derby. Genuine Risk prepped for the Derby in the Wood Memorial, in which she finished third.
Eight Belles has nothing in common with those fillies.
She is, however, a beautifully conformed filly, light-framed and feminine. Her misfortune is not trainer Larry Jones, who skirts the issue uncomfortably. A trainer who criticizes the decisions made by an owner will not be training for long. Though he came here a year ago with Hard Spun, who was runner-up to Street Sense, Jones shows no symptoms of Derby fever and he seems uncomfortable discussing Eight Belles’ chances in the Derby. Owner Rick Porter, however, is apparently beset by Derby fever.
Unlike the three fillies who have won the Derby, Eight Belles has never faced males nor has she attempted a race beyond 1 1/16. She has won her last four races, one in New Orleans, three in Arkansas but none in Grade I company. She would be formidable in the Oaks on Friday, in which Jones has Proud Spell for more reasonable, less vain connections who are probably concerned with the welfare and well being of their prized filly.
There is no reason beyond vanity to run Eight Belles in the Derby, either. As a breeding prospect, her value may be increased but a broodmare can produce only one foal a year. Breeders found it almost impossible for Genuine Risk to conceive and Winning Colors has had no impact as a broodmare.
The only thing that might have saved Eight Belles from the cruelty she is about to endure was a poor post position but the draw put her connections sixth in order of selection, assuring a favorable position in the barrier a day after she drew the outside post in a field of 12 entered in the Oaks. She will face the firing squad from post five.
Porter has enjoyed great success, having owned the very good filly, Jostle, a Grade I winner in 2000, Round Pond, winner of the 2006 Breeders’ Cup Distaff and Hard Spun, who he sold for an enormous amount of money last year. Porter should know better. He should also show a bit of compassion for a very nice, still developing filly who, if he sends her into the teeth of a buzzsaw on Saturday, may very well leave he career in the shadows of the twin spires. If so, it will be a sad, sad day.
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And a sad day it is.
---Katie
