Sunday, May 11, 2008

We have met the enemy and ….

The shrill noise in the background comes from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which claims a membership of 1.8 million habitués of the lunatic fringe and is planning a demonstration at the Preakness.

Caution: The neighborhood adjacent to Pimlico is not exactly Rodeo Drive or one of those other neighborhoods where PETA’s most caustic and disagreeable members enjoy throwing paint as women wearing fur. Some of the demonstrators could find themselves treated less than ethically by the locals, many of whom will doubtless be armed with more than paint.

A PETA demonstration, prompted by the fatal injuries suffered by Eight Belles after she finished second in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday staged in the far more genteel setting of Lexington this week was countered by an equal number of racing supporters. Go figure. In Lexington? PETA could use a bit more judgment in picking its spots, but zealots often suffer a want of rational behavior. This is an organization that protested the nickname of the football team in Green Bay, Wisconsin, because the term Packers has roots in the meat-packing industry. Meat, after all, comes from animals. The Green Bay team held its ground. Redskins was taken.

Over the years, I have owned, in part, two horses, one a month-old, injured mortally while galloping in pastures. One, we bred, a very nice Louis Quatorze colt whose leg was broken as he ran free alongside his mother. The other, many years ago, was impaled on a post when he attempted to jump a fence on an Ocala, Florida farm. It was January 1, the day he became a yearling. Horses, from the moment of birth, are fragile creatures prone to injuries that often defy explanation and often, it seems, determined to commit suicide.

A small group of partners of which I was one claimed a two-year-old for $20,000 from a race at Calder on December 24, 1997. I watched the race from an OTB parlor in Buffalo, N.Y., while spending the holiday with family. The horse, named Wamed, finished fourth, an unremarkable effort. A few hours later, as the family sat down to Christmas Eve dinner, a phone call from the trainer brought the news that the colt had dropped dead while being unsaddled after the race. Merry Christmas.

Few who have been involved in racing, even at the most modest level, are without such stories but suffering a loss of a proven, top-class horse, like Barbaro, Eight Belles or the fallen stars whose deaths have shocked the sport’s hard core and horrified the casual observers, is, unless you’ve had the experience, unimaginable. But, as Leroy Jolley once noted: They don’t play this game in short pants. The game and its people press on because that’s what they do.

Racing will never be without its tragic moments and tragedy happens far more often in the quiet moments, to unknown horses than on the great stages that attract wide audience. Tragedy is, albeit grudgingly, an accepted part of racing that may in some way be alleviated in the future but will never be eliminated. At the moment, a broodmare in which I am a partner carries a foal by Anasheed. Without resilience, the reality will overwhelm those who play the game. Without a horse, the dream that propels the sport dies. Anyone who has ever owned a racehorse and won a race – any race – you know why there will always be a next horse, but that feeling, too, is indescribable. The horse forever remains at the center of racing’s universe, around which all else is in perpetual orbit. The rank and file of PETA has never spent time around racehorses. I suggest that they form a partnership and buy a two-year-old.

Within an hour or so of the Kentucky Derby, Eight Belles trainer, Larry Jones, said the filly’s death may ultimately be the catalyst for action on critical issues. The first of these, if it is indeed a vehicle that fosters progress rather than a knee-jerk symbolic reaction to a bad public relations situation, is the group formed with great haste by The Jockey Club.

“The Thoroughbred Safety Committee is a major step that will provide the examination of the horse welfare and safety issues so badly needed in the wake of recent catastrophic injuries,” said Alex Waldrop, National Thoroughbred Racing Association CEO. “The NTRA supports the committee’s work and plans to work closely with it to build support for the committee’s recommendations with the many constituencies we represent. At the same time, we will redouble our efforts to promote thoroughbred racing to core and target fans as the safe, responsible sport that it is. Now more than ever, no practice, policy or tradition is more important than those that best protect and promote the health of the thoroughbred athlete."

We shall see, but at this point, lack faith. None of this is new. Catastrophe sheds new light on old problems but rarely fosters solution.

In the days when horses were more sturdily made, raced often and suffered fewer catastrophic injuries, horses were bred by people who raced their produce and valued stamina and soundness as well as speed. This, with few exceptions, is no longer the case. The commercial breeding establishment sees the horse as a catalogue page and the rise of sales offering two-year-olds in training only puts unnecessary pressure on young animals. In the days to which racing people long to return, young horses were trained more prudently and began their careers when they were prepared. There were no pinhookers, who bought yearlings at auction, subjected them to stern training regimens to meet deadlines for resale. Sales companies see only commissions or there would be no auctions of two-year-olds in training, no “breeze shows” in which soft-boned juveniles rattle of 11-second furlongs.

Dirt racing surfaces were not sealed, scraped and rolled. Steroids were not administered to make young horses more muscular and imposing in an auction ring – unnaturally so-- than would be the case were they allowed to mature physically and without chemical or hormonal enhancement.

Track maintenance is a lost art and the root cause of much of the criticism of contemporary dirt surfaces and there is a marked tendency to make them harder and faster on big days. Stop. Even the Oklahoma track at Saratoga, once renowned for its kindness to horses and conditioning attributes, is now rolled and sealed regularly, as is the main track and those at Belmont and Aqueduct. This is the mark of a lazy, incompetent track superintendent. It matters that tracks are safe. Fast is a secondary consideration.

The most imposing problem is that everyone recognizes the problems without addressing solutions. Begin with the lack of a central authority and end with permissive medication rules, which facilitate the use of illegal medication by some; absence of transparency, particularly insofar as identification of attending veterinarians is concerned. None of this is apt to instill public confidence in a sport that suffers deep, self-inflicted wounds to its image and credibility.

Calls for banning race-day medication are opposed by horsemen and the groups formed to advance their interests. Support for more judicious breeding practices will fall upon the deaf ears of bottom-line oriented commercial breeders with tens of millions of dollars tied up in stallions who raced while on steroids and medication. There is no support for disclosure of veterinary information. The widely held stance toward problem solving is the circling of wagons.

Now, a filly largely unknown outside racing circles last week, died after the Kentucky Derby. This is not good television. The Kentucky Derby winner, who may very well sweep the Triple Crown, is in the hands of a notorious violator of even the permissive medication rules now in place. PETA is at full screech.HBO, on Monday, jumps into the fray with an investigation of the exportation of horses, some failed or infirm racehorses, for slaughter, something PETA could sink its fangs into with more productive results. The industry is up to its ears in damage control and when all this blows over, nothing is likely to have changed. The racing industry did not reach this point by accident. As the great philosopher, Pogo, once said: “We have met the enemy and it is us.” --PM