Archive for the ‘Oh’ Category
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 can’t 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 friend’s 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 wasn’t 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 I’ve 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.
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