My bride and I have just returned from our annual pilgrimage to Churchill Downs. We have only missed one Derby weekend since we met; last year my daughter graduated from college and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant.
We avoided the awful weather watching the races from the Oaks Day Member Party inside the Kentucky Derby Museum at Churchill Downs.
This of course means that our last Derby saw Barbaro dominate the field and a convincing buzz started about a likely Triple Crown winner in the making. The buzz ended tragically when Barbaro went down at the Preakness and after an eight month fight to save him was finally put down.
Before the weekend of racing started, a rendering of a statue of Barbaro was unveiled. The statue and the ashes of the great horse will be memorialized at Churchill Downs. The memories of Barbaro did not end with the statue ceremony however.
In an under card race on Friday before the Oaks, the first ironic twist of the hazards of thoroughbred racing occurred.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Two years after Barbaro’s catastrophic breakdown, trainer Michael Matz watched another one of his colts break down in a race at Churchill Downs on Friday.
Chelokee, a 4-year-old colt, took a misstep on the sloppy track and fractured his right front leg, veterinarian Larry Bramlage said. The horse was running in fourth place over a sloppy track when he was injured at the top of the stretch of the Alysheba.
“That’s amazingly very similar to what Barbaro had, only in another leg,” Bramlage said.
Chelokee had won the inaugural “Barbaro Stakes” last year at Pimlico.
It has been over 55 years since a trainer won the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby in the same weekend. Larry Jones decided to take the risk. He scratched his heavily favored filly Eight Belles from the Oaks to enter her in the Derby. She would be the first filly to run the historic race since 1999.
Friday was a rainy mess and track conditions deteriorated quickly. No doubt this contributed to several late scratches.
This left Jones with all his hopes on Proud Spell in the Oaks; she did not disappoint. Proud Spell took the lead at the furlong pole and never looked back cruising to a five length victory over Little Belle.
In spite of heavy favorite Big Brown in the Derby field, whispers started that Eight Belles may have a shot at an upset. Big Brown had drawn the outside position in the gate. No horse had ever won the Derby from the far outside gate position.
Going into the final turn, Eight Belles was doing exactly what Jones had wanted. She was trailing Big Brown closely on the outside in third and fourth place respectively and clear track to the finish line.
The sprint to the line started. Both Big Brown and Eight Belles quickly passed leaders Bob Black Jack and Cowboy Cal. The day would belong to Big Brown as he pulled away from the pack winning by five lengths with a time of 2:01.
Then almost a quarter mile from the finish line, tragedy struck again. Far past the finish line few of the 157,000 + at Churchill Downs immediately noticed the filly collapse.
Eight Belles jockey Gabriel Saez felt something wrong but it was too late.
“After we passed the wire, I stood up,” Saez said in a statement. “She started galloping funny and I tried to pull her up, but she went down.”
The injury was bad, very bad. Eight Belles had broken both from ankles. She was euthanized on the track.
The Kentucky Derby remains the most exciting two minutes in all of sports but these recent tragedies will ignite more talk of “at what cost?”That discussion is fair and probably needed but let’s clear a few points before the discussion starts:
Thoroughbred horses at this level are not abused. These are superbly conditioned and maintained world class athletes. These are million dollar investments and every possible care is afforded them.
Horse racing fans are not like fans of blood sports like cock fighting. I can assure you that not one person of the 157,770 at Churchill Downs found any joy in watching that filly being put down.
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