that match race was on National Television...was hyped for weeks...racing never fully recovered from that...just awful.
Ruffian is not the reason horse-racing declined.
It was natural. By the ‘70s (and a lot of changes happened in the ‘60s which led to further downfall) people no longer had much connection to horses. And it got worse. When horses were the basic mode of transport, it was huge, both gallop and harness. The retention of interest was most likely because people still remembered the horses on the street and perhaps their own parents or grandparents’ horse.
But eventually horses became at best a 3rd-generation removed and no experience with them.
That is the downfall of horse-racing. Not needing them anymore.