LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Moments after Eight Belles shattered her ankles and hit the ground while pulling up after Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, the recriminations began to flow.
Trying to become the fourth filly to win the roses, Eight Belles finished second, 33/4 lengths clear of the horse in third. She appeared to be galloping out fine around the first turn when tragedy struck.
“I tried to pull her up, but she went down,” said jockey Gabriel Saez. Unable to stand, with both front legs gone, Eight Belles was euthanized as she lay on the track.
The accident was freakish. Dr. Larry Bramlage, Churchill Downs’ on-call veterinarian, said he had never seen injuries like hers occur so long after a race was over, and no horse in memory had suffered a catastrophic breakdown in the Derby.
But of course, Eight Belles instantly recalled the sight of Barbaro pulling up with a shattered right hind leg soon after the start of the 2006 Preakness. He survived for eight months, capturing the hearts of the nation, before the hoof disease laminitis cost him his life.
Echoing a number of columns and blogs written after the Derby, mostly by people who had no use for the game to begin with, a sports talk radio host yesterday called for horse racing to be banned, comparing it with dog fighting and all other forms of animal cruelty.
This is absurd. No one loves these thoroughbreds, bred to race for more than 300 years, more than the horsemen who care for them. That especially applies to Eight Belles’ trainer, Larry Jones.
“These things are our family,” Jones, his eyes filled with tears, his voice breaking, said at a press conference after the race. “We put everything into them we have, and they have given us everything they have. They put their life on the line. And she was glad to do it. She ran the race of her life.”
Yesterday, Jones said Eight Belles was sound, that she “never wore a (front) bandage in her life that the track at Churchill Downs was safe and did not cause the injury; and that a filly running against colts had nothing to do with it.
Following an autopsy, Eight Belles will be cremated. Her ashes likely will be interred at Churchill Downs, also the final resting place of the 2006 Derby winner, Barbaro.