not fun

I was up at the Meadowlands for the Derby and got out of there pretty quickly after the race. The whole deal was just sad, from the crummy under card to the Derby winner to the tragic breakdown of Eight Belles. Big Brown was impressive, of course, but it's not promising for the breed when the winner of America's classic race for young colts is lame at the warm-up and equally lame cooling out. Sign me up for a stallion share, pronto. Price no object. When the running started, he was all business and a winner at every call, but I imagine that, over time, this group will be found to be sub-par relative to recent generations and that Big Brown was just a standout on the day in an otherwise suspect lot. Most of that field ran quite poorly.

Eight Belles ran her race and performed remarkably well, but the story isn't about how well she did or didn't run, it's about the fact that her effort left her with two broken ankles before even galloping out past the clubhouse turn. It's the worst thing that can happen in this business and I really feel for all the folks involved with the filly. This one hurts a bit more, though, not only because of her obvious talent, a natural draw, but also because the connections made an aggressive play with their filly and got burned in the worst possible way.

Ultimately, I don't think it was any one thing that caused her breakdown, but rather a bunch of little, important factors that added up to open her up to serious trouble. They include the rock hard racing surface, added distance and related stress of race (she had never raced beyond 1m 1/16th), the big work on Sunday in 58 1/5, and perhaps the fineness of her bone. You couldn't point to any one particular item and suggest "that's the one," with definite certainty (though I'm sure many would point solely to the surface, which I can understand). Instead, as it always seems to be, it was likely a collection of variables that added up to increase the odds of something horrible happening.

As anyone that works with horses will tell you, every time they leave the stall (and even sometimes when they don't) it's always some measure of stress that their bodies are enduring. You control for it as best you can, bring them along in a fashion that empowers them to thrive and grow in concert with increased stress loads and stand ever vigilant and ready to back off in the event that the work load is too much. It's a daily balancing act and more like a high wire act with certain horses. Well, the stress was clearly too much yesterday for the poor filly. Somewhere along the line maybe the balancing act was knocked out of whack, maybe they squeezed just a bit too much out of that track during that Friday night. We'll never know for sure, but the tragic ending for Eight Belles reminds us to do our best to manage the wide range of variables constantly in play and that our foremost goal, win, lose or draw, is to get them back to the barn.