Posted on 05/03/2008 4:21:34 PM PDT by SE Mom
Hillary is long past any “filly” days. She’s well into “old mare” territory now.
Post #53.. Trying to educate myself so noticed your post which was helpful and related to aforementioned post. Would you then say that there would have been no warning signs to a highly paid professional who was in charge of the care of Eight Belles?
I am not trying to say anything here, just trying to understand " that this is not unusual " , just the price one's horse must pay to be champion?
Oh how horrible. Just from the descriptions I couldn’t watch the video of her falling.
“You missed the point, the criticism was that we race them too young while their bones are still strengthening and they are more vulnerable to lower leg injuries.”
Indeed - most of these horse started racing as 2 year olds, joints not tight and still in their growing spurt.
Horse should not be stated before three.
“You missed the point, the criticism was that we race them too young while their bones are still strengthening and they are more vulnerable to lower leg injuries.”
Indeed - most of these horse started racing as 2 year olds, joints not tight and still in their growing spurt.
Horse should not be stated before three.
I will still follow horse racing, but not for a while. Hurts too much.
It’s not that unusual for the best athletes in the world to take themselves near the point of tearing or breaking their bodies. Alberto Juantarena broke his foot in an 800 meter race, ending his career. Derek Redmond tore his hamstring a bit over half way through his semi heat of the 400 meter finals at Barcelona in 1992 - it was his last chance to win gold in that theater.
Jim Wass
I strained my hamstring and withdrew 700 m into the 3000 m racewalk in the 2006 Indoor Masters National Championships while leading the 50-54 age group. Unlike the subject of this thread and the athletes I mentioned I am still competing.
I sure have to agree with you.That was the last fight I ever watched and I lost my interest in boxing.
I missed watching the Derby this year and do not wish to see replays of it.It certainly is tragic.
The biggest problem by far though, is the breeding. They keep breeding faster, lighter built horses, with very little stamina. Big bodies on tiny legs.
If you want another example of stupid people, with too much money, completely screwing up an animal, take a look at what happened to the German Shepard dog. It's a crying shame.
My wife has a Hanoverian gelding who turned three years old a couple of weeks ago. He was US horse of the year in the breed classes back when he was a colt. She has not yet been on his back and only recently started working him in hand. The Thoroughbreds are simply being trained and raced too young IMHO.
Back in the eighties I had a couple of brood mares and ttheir progeny. They were called “cheap claimers” in those days and raced at Ellis, Turfway, Churchhill and River Downs. One Sunday morning I had a call from the trainer that one was euthanized at Churchill while galloping. He said he stepped in a hole or soft spot in the track and broke a leg. The trainer was weeping, me too.
Reminds me of gymnasts,,they push them too hard to young and they end up dwarfed and just suffering on accouhnt of the pushing. And all young athletes,,they just push them too young.
That jockey killed that filly just as sure as if he had taken out a gun and shot her.
I’ve seen enough fixed horse races in my time, but I didn’t know until today that the Kentucky Derby could be bought. That filly wanted to win today, you could see it in her before the race. Just as Big Brown passed her, her jockey pulled up on her so hard he spun her head to the right.
Crowd favorite+longer odds than Big Brown+paid off jockey=dead horse
She would have been running on adrenaline. I thought on first sight that she looked a lot younger than the colts — maybe I saw an old picture — but she just did not look as mature developmentally.
That said, thoroughbreds are definitely started too young and the Derby’s mile and a quarter is a long haul for 3 year olds.
I don’t think I will ever watch horse racing any more. I’ve seen too many in my life that have had a terrible impact...Ruffian, then of course, Barbaro (my hometown favorite),now Eight Belles. The excitement is gone, I am just flat our sad at the loss of this beautiful animal.
So utterly sad.
Yes re: birthdays, exactly what one of the huge problems is.
You can take a January baby ad run them against a May baby, and as 2 year olds, you can be running a horse as young as 20 months against 24 month olds.. and the only criteria for most trainers is that their “knees are closed” before they start breezing them.
Too damn young and too damn fragile. They are bred for potential, not conformation or strength. They want wide chests and deep ribs for lung capacity and big hindquarters and a long hip for propulsion.
I’ve had a couple off-the-track-thoroughbreds and they all had some unsoundness that was caused by physical stress, not conformational flaw - especially one nice super-sweet and generous mare, a granddaughter of Northern Dancer.. who had a shot stifle. *sigh*
I’ll stick to my mutts and trail horses too, that industry is just way too cold-blooded for me. The warm-fuzzy stories are too far and few in between to appeal to me anymore.
When they start racing them as four-year-olds, sturdy and sound, I’ll watch again. That would actually be sporting - not like watching a race to see who will finish intact. I’m sorry - I’m really angry and heartbroken at the same time.
Many professionals of vast experience watched Eight Belles (and all the other horses in the field) with eagle eyes in the months, weeks, days, and minutes leading up the starting gate. Her trainer truly loved her—more, surely, than her owners did, as he had the daily care of her—and would have scratched her from the race if there had been the slightest hint of an unsoundness. It seems this was completely unpredictable.
Personally I would not ascribe this disaster to her competition with males. She did not get bumped or roughed up, and the same thing might well have happened if she had run in the Kentucky Oaks (for fillies) instead of the Derby. Who knows?
We who are involved with Thoroughbred horses are painfully aware of their fragility. The truth is that prey animals in general and horses in particular are not as well-engineered as predator animals (when was the last time your dog went lame?) and Thoroughbreds especially are subject to mechanical failure. This is a relatively new problem. Two hundred and fifty years ago, when the breed was being developed, the early champions like Eclipse and Hambletonian ran races of two miles in three heats. They did it wearing heavy iron shoe, carrying jockeys and saddles heavier than today’s, and without the benefits of modern feeding, conditioning, and veterinary techniques. Something has happened to the breed.
There are many people who will point to the extensive use of particular bloodlines in the modern Thoroughbred, lines that are successful on the track but do not impart strength or soundness. The Northern Dancer descendants are frequently named. Others say that we are simply breeding too many cheap Thoroughbreds without regard to soundness, and we treat them as disposable objects, to be thrown away and slaughtered if they don’t work out as racehorses.
That said, if you can find a racehorse who made it on the track past age 6, the chances are you will have a strong, sound horse who can stand up to the stresses of foxhunting or show-jumping without trouble.
Please explain to us how the jockey arranged to have both front ankles of the mare break as he was riding her. We would all be interested.
You see her reined ridiculously to the right in all the footage.
I’m beginning to believe y’all who say she was murdered.
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