Eight Belles

It’s painful and sad to see a horse go down during a horse race. I’ve watched it several times and each time it happens, I shudder. The joy and pleasure of the Kentucky Derby was diminished a bit upon hearing that Eight Belles, the talented filly who ran second to Big Brown, had gone down on the gallop out and had to be euthanized.

Since that harsh event, there has been a bit of an uproar about the death of Eight Belles. Photos and videos of her falling appear daily, although I’ll watch none of them. There are cries of animal cruelty, banning the jockey, Gabriel Saez, punishing the jockey for animal cruelty, banning horse racing. The list goes on and on.

I love horse racing. I hate to see these beautiful animals die when such an event occurs. I’m am not going to be an apologist for this sport either. There are dangers in racing both to horse and rider. Most jockeys have broken many bones in their bodies during their careers of riding on top of 1200 pound animals traveling at 35-40 miles and hour. Several have been paralyzed for life, and others have died during a race.

I’m not even sure they know when or how the injury to Eight Belles occurred. Most racing injuries are to one leg, Eight Belles painfully broke both ankles. That’s very rare.

The answers are not simple. There are some positive safety results in using a synthetic racing surface such as the one at Keeneland. Three year-olds are young animals, their bodies are not completely developed yet. Horses are bred (and significantly inbred), favoring speed over strength and stamina. Performance altering drugs are rampant in the industry.

Horse racing is dangerous for all participants. So is car racing and football. The argument about those sports is that the participants in those sports make a choice, where horses do not.

I will continue to love and enjoy these beautiful animals in racing. I’ll celebrate their achievements and be saddened by their deaths. I’m glad, in some respects, that a discussion is going on about racing. It is needed. On the other hand, a knee-jerk reaction is not.

Paul Daley, a columnist for the Lowell Sun (Mass.), whose words on the subject of horse racing I respect, recently published a column on the topic.

Your comments are welcome.

Keeneland

Last Friday, a couple friends and I made our seasonal trek down I-75 a few miles to Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Kentucky. Located on a large farm, just next door to historic Calumet Farms, as far as I’m concerned, Keeneland is horse racing heaven. For about three weeks in April and October, fans can see some of the best horse racing in the country.

As you can discover from the photos below, Keeneland is a beautiful race track and a pleasant venue to watch horse racing. Besides having the best racing in the country during their season, they make it easy to have an enjoyable day at the races. The horses get saddled in a paddock area just outside the grandstand, among beautiful old oak trees. You can almost touch these majestic animals as they leave the walking ring on their way to the race track.

Prior to this fall meet, Keeneland renovated their track:

• installing an all-weather racing surface called Polytrack
• changed the configuration of their track, making wider turns
• added Trakus, a technology for tracking and viewing the horses.

Both Polytrack and Trakus are revolutionary changes for horse racing. Polytrack is a softer and much safer racing surface, enabling a fast race track in even the most inclement weather. The same Polytrack surface was used last winter at Turfway Park offering few, if any, cancellations of racing due to a frozen track.

The Polytrack surface at Keeneland has, however, changed the way players handicap a race there. Used to that Keeneland was notorious for their speed bias, meaning that horses on the lead (the speed) often would win, as those with a late run at the end simply could not catch up. This fall however, was a frustrating one, as we saw many longshots hit the wire first, racing from off the pace, swinging wide into the stretch, and making a strong dash for the wire. Many of us avoided speed horses, preferring those with some experience on a similar surface. Additionally, many avoid horses who primarily race on grass when they change to the dirt surface. This was not my experience this fall at Keeneland.

Trakus is an interesting technology. Tiny radio devices are placed in the saddle cloth of each race horse, signalling sensors positioned all around the race track. This enables the exact position and path of each race horse to be tracked as they run the race course. Each racer’s exact times, distance traveled, and path could be recorded as well as displayed on the video monitors at the track. Although the horses were displayed as colored dots on a computer screen, it was easy to identify “your horse” even when crowded into a pack on the far turn.

Keeneland is, by far, the best place I’ve ever been to enjoy horse racing. It’s a short drive from Cincinnati and offers magnificent scenery and great racing. Unfortunately the racing season is over tomorrow, October 27. Hopefully, spring will roll around here soon, and I’ll be back at Keeneland again in April.