They shoot racehorses, don't they?

Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro will likely have to be put down. Will the troubled sport of horseracing meet the same fate?

By Sally Eckhoff

Read more: Politics, News, Sally Eckhoff

Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Jockey Edgar Prado and a track assistant try to help Barbaro at the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore.

Aug. 1, 2006 | SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. -- For the TV audience on Preakness day this May, it seemed like a case of "No, it can't be." It was weird enough that Barbaro, the wickedly fit Triple Crown hopeful, had overpowered the magnetized starting gate and blazed up the track all alone. But within seconds of the official start of the race a few minutes later, he was suddenly standing in the wake of the obliviously galloping field, holding his hind leg in the air like a dog who'd stepped on a tack. It hung oddly because the fetlock (ankle) joint was shattered. "Please don't put him down!" spectators screamed at the attending veterinarian.

The hubbub continued after he was hauled off to surgery in New Bolton, Penn., making Barbaro the only horse in history ever to receive 20,000 get-well cards. But six weeks later, reports of his seesawing recovery have all but vanished from the news, and a second surprise visit in mid-July from his jockey, Edgar Prado, was certainly meant as a goodbye. Walk into any well-staffed barn on a Monday and you'll be met with the same grave question: "Did they put him down yet?" The rumors in racing communities such as Saratoga Springs, the biggest summer racing meet in the U.S., proliferate. "They won't do it on a weekend." "The owner wants to let him go, but the insurance companies won't let him. "They should have done it right there on the track." "He's in a lot of pain, that's for sure," is the one you hear most from people who've seen horses "founder," or contract laminitis, which is the crippling disease that has afflicted Barbaro's injured hind foot. Michael Matz, Barbaro's trainer, says he's not getting his hopes up; Barbaro's vet at New Bolton, Dr. Dean Richardson, has said everything from "he looks good" to "he's doing as well as can be expected." Over this past weekend, the odds for his recovery were judged at 50-50. Nobody wants it to happen, but his demise is more likely than not, and New Bolton's expertise in putting it off shouldn't be taken as evidence that somehow, this horse can live through a trauma that only a handful in history have ever survived.

Horses comport themselves a bit like cats and dogs, but they're built more like rabbits. Their legs feel like nothing but cool bone wrapped in silky skin with tight, steely cables running up the back -- a huge liability in an animal with a natural bent toward self-destruction. Prey animals first and foremost, horses are unable to stifle their instinct to flee when injured, and they're maddeningly delicate. The undefeated Ruffian broke her leg in her 1975 match race with Foolish Pleasure and rebroke it days later by kicking the cast to smithereens. Fifteen years afterward, another brilliant filly, Go For Wand, went down in a Breeder's Cup race, plunged up again, and thrashed spastically forward with her ruptured tendon pulled halfway from its sheath and her foot nearly torn off. Many in the audience reached involuntarily toward her as if they could stop her in their arms. "Their sobs and gasps built to a roaring wail," The New York Times reported. She never made it into the ambulance. The now-defunct National Sports Daily marked her death with a one-word headline: "Tragedy."

When Barbaro's ordeal was moved behind closed doors of the multimillion-dollar veterinary clinic at New Bolton, racing breathed a collective sigh of relief. The industry has been waning for years, and is already plagued by management scandals as well as by competition from other forms of betting. A horse's public death is likely to scandalize those new fans who've been lured into the stands by the heroic, almost-human careers of Seabiscuit, Funny Cide and Smarty Jones. It doesn't help that trainers and riders are fond of muttering that accidents like Barbaro's happen every day. "Every day" is a bit of an exaggeration, the statistic being estimated at one breakdown for every 2,000 starts. It's still adequate shorthand for the crude and arbitrary way that talented animals, hard work and money get slammed into the turf. Money, of course, is seen as the corrupting force in this situation. The public teeters on the verge of pronouncing the one truth that insiders are unable or unwilling to acknowledge -- that racing is cruel, that animal sports are outdated, and that the big shots and trainers don't care because it's all about the purse.

Dealing a death blow to racing may be on more people's minds than usual, but the industry, at least in New York, seems to be doing a pretty good job of wounding itself. The New York Racing Association, which administers the three thoroughbred tracks in the state -- Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga -- has been nailed for tax evasion, awarding no-bid contracts, and other acts of sleazy nepotism. When the NYRA's franchise ends later this year, what's likely to come next sounds straight out of Las Vegas. The MGM Casino wants a piece of the action, as does Magna Entertainment, a subsidiary of an auto supply empire. Their proposals revolve around installing "year-round entertainment centers with on-season racing and off-season simulcasting." In other words, video poker, slot machines and other forms of bloodless, mechanized gambling.

Magna already owns Pimlico and 10 other tracks outside New York, and Pimlico's current management can't refute the current speculation that the track will be sold and the remainder of Maryland's racing consolidated at Laurel, or worse yet, somewhere out of state. A year ago, the rumors were thick that once the summer meet was over, Pimlico, which has been likened to a NASCAR track in the ghetto, would never reopen.

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