A little historical background

Uproars over shocking breakdowns at horse races are nothing new. The first big one in modern times happened in 1975, when the great Ruffian broke a leg during a match race and was put down after surgery failed.

Ruffian's demise was the first ominous sign of genetic problems surfacing in the breed. As a lifelong horse lover who grew up in the livestock industry, in a family that used to be in the racing game, I love the sport...but I'd be among the first to admit that horse-racing is in big trouble today because of these genetic problems.

Many people in the game aren't willing to admit it publicly, but they know in their hearts that the Thoroughbred horse is plagued with a whole array of growing concerns. One problem is low fertility and frequent breeding failure. Another problem is lungs that often bleed during a race. A third is bones that break easily. Indeed, poor fertility and a fragile skeleton in purebred animals are known to be the direct result of too much inbreeding. Often breeders will mate related horses to each other to ensure that an ancestor's speed, or ability to run a certain distance, or extra-large heart, will be captured in a new foal.

Inbreeding isn't bad in itself, but it has to be done with caution. In her website "Pedlines," Thoroughbred pedigree authority Ellen Page calls for common sense. She says, "By all means, inbreed to great families. This is a priceless tool. But don't inbreed mindlessly. You are creating a living thing." Page analyzes one prominent bloodline in Ruffian's pedigree that had become notorious for "soft bone."

Since Ruffian, a growing chorus of voices within the sport have called for change -- especially after Barbaro's disaster during the 2006 Preakness.
Yet the sport resists change, so that today big racing events often continue to be marred by these public tragedies. Some defenders of the status quo take the attitude, "It's a dangerous sport -- these things are going to happen."

Yet the pace of injuries has picked up. Last fall, the Breeder's Cup World Championship -- racing's most prestigious international meet -- saw not one but two breakdowns in front of the TV news cameras. One horse survived the career-ending injury, but the other, Pine Island, was euthanized.

Now we have Derby winner Big Brown, who is inbred too. He's being called a super-horse, a possible Triple Crown winner. His spectacular closing speed, the ease with which he annihilated his competition at the Derby, suggests that his breeders may have captured the biggest genetic prize in Thoroughbreds -- the extra-large heart known to trace back to 18th-century British champion Eclipse. But did they also capture enough bone strength for this horse? As Ellen Page says, "If the legs can't hold up the heart, it ends badly." I will hold my breath for Big Brown.

Time to Get Over It

Racing is not the only global billion-dollar sport to have found itself in hot water over the value it put on life. In auto racing in the 1960s, the technology of speed was outrunning the technology for driver safety. Dozens of drivers died in spectacular crashes. Here again, some shrugged and said, "It's dangerous out there -- these things happen." By 2001, things came to a head in the Daytona 500 when NASCAR idol Dale Earnhardt became the fourth driver to be killed in a 9-month period. In the midst of a multi-car wreck, he hit the wall at 150 mph and suffered massive injuries.

Fans reacted to the death of their icon with such fury that the motorsports establishment realized -- belatedly -- that it was time to rethink that old "these things happen." In the next few years, Formula 1, Indy and NASCAR racing accomplished a great deal on race car safety. Today drivers walk away from wrecks that would have killed them just a few years ago.

So the horse-racing industry needs to get over the old fatalism as well. They won't be in business much longer if they don't fix their horse so it's easier to breed, with better health and stronger bones. Some figures in the sport are deep in denial, and don't want to change the entrenched breeding and business practices. They are not cruel people, and I know they love their horses. But if they don't act soon, they will face the same public fury that auto-racing authorities faced. In fact, they may already be facing it because of Eight Belles.

Worse -- they may be underestimating the speed with which a genetic problem can reach critical mass. When I was a ranch kid in the early 1950s, I happened to witness how America's purebred beef-cattle industry went through a complete wipe-out because of a recessive gene for dwarfism that was ignored at first. It quickly spread because of over-enthusiastic inbreeding to a few popular bloodlines.

PETA picks a bad strategy

PETA faxed a stiff letter to the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority, demanding some immediate changes -- but they didn't demand that horse racing be banned. That was smart of them. In a pitched battle with this sport, they'd lose. Like motorsports, horse racing is a global industry commanding billions of dollars in corporate sponsorship, investment and betting revenue, so it's a powerful lobby. States where the sport is big, like New York and California and Kentucky, would fight tooth and nail to protect their revenues from the betting handle.

But PETA's overall approach is flawed. They practice a politics of emotion, when common sense is a better tool for helping animals. The other day, emotion led PETA to make erroneous statements about the race, as they tried to make a cruelty case against the jockey.

Was Gabriel Saez at fault? At a press conference, Eight Belles' trainer Larry Jones stated that the jockey did his professional best under the circumstances. When the news footage is viewed, you can see the field come pouring out of the far turn, five or six wide, and Eight Bells can be seen surging ahead of them, leaving the pack well behind. Saez is not whipping her -- he knows his horse is on a roll but he knows he isn't going to catch Big Brown, so he is just riding with both hands, going for 2nd place. As she comes down to the wire, Eight Belles is still running normally, ears pricked.

It was during the gallop-out, Saez said, that he felt Eight Belles starting to move "funny." He said, "I tried to get her to stop." But stopping a thousand-pound horse moving at nearly 40 mph is a little like stopping a freight train. She was on fire and refused to slow much till she rounded the club-house turn. In the news footage, you can see how her front legs finally give way, first one, then the other, and she slumps to the track.

The problems with the Thoroughbred horse won't be fixed by emotion, or by dropping an atom bomb on one rider. I am 100 percent in favor of humane treatment of animals, and support many things that PETA has done. But PETA needs to get more educated about the sport they're attacking. They need to put their energy into supporting a real solution -- the adoption of common-sense breeding practices that will undo the genetic harm and produce a stronger, sounder horse -- not only in the U.S. but all over the world. This would be the smartest, most effective use of PETA's influence and financial resources.

In their fax, PETA demanded that whipping be outlawed. There are already strict rules about use of the whip, and jockeys are set down for violating.

In addition, PETA also demanded a switch to synthetic track surfaces, that are allegedly lower-impact than the dirt tracks so basic to U.S. racing. A number of U.S. tracks have already done that. But the poly tracks are a new technology, and nobody knows what their long-term effect will be on horses' legs. And poly tracks shouldn't be a substitute for a common-sense solution to the breeding problems.

So farewell and hail to Eight Belles. My sympathies to her owner, her trainer, her rider and everyone else closely associated with her. I hope this gallant filly's death will finally be the trigger for major changes in the sport, that can benefit generations of race horses to come.