I didn't watch the Kentucky this year, or actually last year. Tonight I heard a filly finished second in the Kentucky Derby, then broke both of her front ankles. I don't think I'll watch horse racing anymore. This incident confirms that there are no more horsemen in the horse business. Old time horsemen use to say if a horse didn't have good legs and good feet, that it had "No Bottom" it was useless and usually ended up at the kill pen. Today, well-funded, but uneducated buyers pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions for yearlings bred to break down like Eight Belles. Everyone wants to sip mint juleps, wear big, hats, suits, and bow ties, and pretend to be aristocratic southern horsemen. In the old days, Eight Belles would never have made it out of the pasture, much less into training and on the track.
In the old days, thoroughbreds were bred to run, not sprint. In the old days, a thoroughbred was expected to run three, four mile heats on race day and stay sound. In the old days, trainers and breeders bred horses for substance, not style. Now big farms crank out inbred Native Dancer descendants with crooked legs, long pasterns, and no brains. The sad part is, rich idiots continue to buy them up, and if they didn't make it on the track, they use to end up in the kill pen, but now even that's been banned, so they end up being starved at some over-crowed equine rescue farm. Eight Belles conception and demise is symptomatic of America's political and economic predicament today, all style and no substance, with no ability or desire to hold up over the long term. If you want to read about the old horsemen check out these two books, Great Black Jockeys, by Edward Hotaling, and War Horse: Mounting the Cavalry with America's Finest Horses, by Phil Livingston and Ed Roberts.
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