Published: June 10, 2008 01:45 pm            

ROOT: When is enough enough?

I am not a big horse racing fan but, like many people, I do like to watch the Kentucky Derby and then follow the winner of that race through the chase for the Triple Crown. But the last few years have made me wonder if maybe we are sometimes watching animal abuse when we are watching a horse race in any of these Triple Crown races. I will be the first to admit that I am not as knowledgeable as I would like to be about this stuff but I am intelligent enough to make comments on what I can see and what I can see is starting to bother me.

First of all I have never been a huge fan of a little 90 pound man whipping a huge, graceful, and beautiful horse just to get that horse to go faster. Once again I know it sounds very basic and naïve but it has always bothered me. I have heard trainers claim that the horse does not feel a great deal of pain when they are being whipped. My response is that they whip the horse to make it go faster, if that whip was not painful then it would not cause the horse to move faster. Using logic we can all conclude that the whip is causing pain to the horse. I guess I would feel a little better if we evened up the odds by allowing coaches to be out there on motor scooters whipping 400 meter runners to get them to run faster.

But it is the tremendous pressure put on these animals because of the money involved in training and racing them that bothers me. Everyone remembers the story of Barbaro. Barbaro won the 2006 Kentucky Derby and was a heavy favorite to win the Preakness. In the Preakness Barbaro fractured his leg in three places. The horse was in agony and usually a horse is put down in those cases. It is the humane thing to do as a horse with a broken leg has very little chance of healing properly and is in tremendous pain. But Barbaro was forced to live with that pain for months before finally being put down. Why? Money is the reason.

Barbaro was a Kentucky Derby winner and would have made his owners a fortune as a stud horse for breeding. But when Barbaro was injured racing there was little thought of what was best for the horse. The end result was months of agony for Barbaro trying to repair an injury that had never been repaired on a horse before. It was cruel and unnecessary and the owners should at least be ashamed for what they put that horse through.

Now we get to Big Brown. I watched the Kentucky Derby and I watched the Preakness. No one was going to beat Big Brown in the Belmont. There wasn't a horse alive that could beat Big Brown. But Big Brown sustained a crack in his hoof prior to the Belmont and suddenly doubts started to creep in. The owners of Big Brown all maintained that it was a routine thing and it would not affect Big Brown's race. Horses are not humans. They cannot tell us when they are in pain or when they may have their own doubts about their ability to run. They also cannot tell us if they even like being forced to race. Of course the trainers will tell everyone that Big Brown is okay to race, Big Brown was a shoe in for the Triple Crown and it pays a lot to be the owner of a Triple Crown winning stud horse.

I didn't watch the Belmont. I couldn't bring myself to do it. Thank God my worst fears were not realized as Big Brown only lost the race. But maybe it was a race Big Brown should have never tried in the first place. Maybe this newest form of public animal abuse known as high stakes horse racing needs a little more scrutiny from real authorities because obviously they cannot police themselves.

Yes I am an animal lover and I hate seeing animals abused or neglected. But to me this is something different than a sport like boxing. If a human does not want to box then they simply walk away and say they do not want to do it. But if a horse does not want to race then what are that horse's options? Obviously Big Brown did not want to race the Belmont and I suspect that was something that the owners and trainers knew. So at what point do we say that enough is enough and give the horses, the real athletes in horse racing, a say in what happens to them?

George N. Root III is a Lockport resident. His column runs every Wednesday. Send comments to georgeroot@verizon.net.

        

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