But they are breaking their bones.

When I turned on the Derby on Saturday, I had mixed feelings. I’m not a big fan of horse racing, because I know the horses are too young, their growth plates not yet matured enough to handle the strain of training and running, their health and readiness for such a level of competition only a mild thought in the minds of most trainers and owners. I know I’m making broad generalizations. I look at my own filly (age four) and realize she’s a baby—immature, gangly, hip higher than shoulder, unbalanced. She’s a well-bred sport horse but she’s nowhere near ready being able to compete even in a little local show.

And here we are, asking three year olds to run for their lives, literally. And not only that, but we’ve bred the hardiness right out of them. Check out Northern Dancer’s progeny and you find that, yes, indeed, he’s the winningest sire ever. But does that mean that all our race horses have the same bloodlines? And well, check out what such inbreeding has done to canine health. It doesn’t take a genetic expert to realize we’re over breeding our top horses. Our equine athletes are more prone to weakened anatomical structures and less able to physically withstand the unusual stress they’re put under.

I watched the race and sighed with relief when Big Brown ran clean and strong through the finish. And then I heard those words: “There’s a horse down. The filly is down,” and (like a NASCAR crash) the TV cameras cut to the outrider’s horse standing rider-less and the crowd of people clustered on the track around Eight Belles.

I turned the TV off. I did not want to know, to think or to hear about another equine casualty. A casualty, I think, of greed and competition gone wrong. Such accidents are bad for us horse people. They give the industry as a whole (from backyard to back stretch) a bad reputation—and then we loose spectators.

At the recent Equine Industry Summit (held in Lexington between Rolex and the Derby), several important race track marketing executives talked about the challenge of bringing people to the tracks rather than having them bet at home on their computers. When horses die for no other reason other than physiological (in other words, they were not injured in an accident of sport) it makes those marketing executives’ jobs that much harder.

Many horse people have their first equine experiences at the track. Many of the finest, most ethical trainers and riders I know started out there. If horse racing continues to show the worst of the sport (over bred, immature horses) in action, we’ll lose those potential riders/horse owners in the future. It will hurt the industry.  Do I want horse racing to go away completely? I don’t know the answer to that. We’d lose the most visible element of our industry—an element that brings people to the kinder, gentler world of horses. Would I like it to be safer? Oh yes, of course. I prefer to see the horses run when they’re seven, eight and nine, when they’re strong, robust adult horses at their prime and when the jockeys don’t have to starve themselves to make weight. I don’t know the answer. I do know I may never watch another Derby. I just can’t take it.