Barbero

[vrikasatma]

I know there's a few horse people on this board. I didn't see the Preakness yesterday because I was working but a woman wearing horse racing regalia came by the booth at one point late morning.

Later that evening I got home and read about Barbero's breakdown. Once, I read an article on the Palio in Siena and saw a picture of a young horse with a fracture like the article described; that instantly came to mind. The leg swinging loose, the look of pure screaming agony on the colt's face. I can't even begin to imagine the pain. When I saw the pictures on Yahoo!News today, I just got sick. That nausea continues through to today and I keep offering prayers for Epona to grant that beautiful colt Her favour and let him survive.

Alongside the sorrow and worry is the ever-present RAGE that I feel towards horse racing in America. I don't want to abolish it but we need change and need it NOW. In Ireland and England, they don't back the horses until they're three and oftentimes the horses in big stakes races are six, seven and eight years old. Here, they slap a saddle on the kids' backs when they're <i>barely</i> yearlings. The three-year-olds in the Triple Crown are the functional equivalents of ten-year-old children in Olympic-level competition. When my horse was three, he was trotting circles on the longeline. Time enough for 18-foot pole vaults in three or four years when his joints are grown together and he's muscled up and balanced enough.

This society is so fast fast fast. Everyone wants everything five seconds ago and damn the consequences. If the Jockey Club and the Triple Crown were limited to physically-mature horses — ages six and up — we'd see a lot less death and suffering. Race horses should be an investment, not a commodity.

Are we America in the 21st Century or are we just Rome in the first century BCE? The only difference between modern American racing and chariot races in the Circvs Maximvs is that when the horses go down, people cry instead of cheer and salivate.

Horse racing is in dire need of modernization and this is the best and latest proof of that.

[SnowWalker]

It is unlikely that the Jockey Club will ever see the error in allowing immature horses to race. Some of those Triple Crown Bound horses are barely even 3 if they are late foals.

I do agree with you that they should wait longer to race horses, but my mere agreeance with you cannot make a change happen. It takes a lot to change something that has been so implanted in society as it is.

Also, I feel that a large amount of problems with these horses are due to inbreeding. I feel that if horses were not continually inbred along the same lines, then we could outcross into sturdier (thoroughbred) stock. Quarter Horse breeding is now beginning to understand the value of outcross after years of breeding to specific sires that while awesome in the show ring, were not actually physically sound. ie large muscular horses with small feet (as comparitve to their all-around size).

Of course, that's just me opening a different can of worms.


~Snowy

[vrikasatma]

Thoroughbreds are not inbred: they have at least that much going for them. Quarter Horses and of course Arabs, where father-to-daughter and sibling-to-sibling breedings are all but standard practice, are inbred, but the Jockey Club, to their credit, assiduously avoids that. And they have a large enough gene pool to allow them to uphold that practice.

One voice won't do a lot but my recent trip to Washington DC for LiveSTRONG Day showed me that if you believe in a cause deeply enough, it snowballs and can become a great unified cry that's hard to ignore.

I took the liberty to create a petition on the Petition Site, addressing the North American racing authority and asking respectfully to raise the minimum age for competition in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes to 6. Here's the link:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/169461402

[SnowWalker]

Perhaps not inbred daughter to father, but many "lines" are bred back to the same "lines". That to me is as inbreeding as cousins kissing cousins. In my OPINION that is not a good thing to do.
~Snowy

[vrikasatma]

Check out *Raffles' line. It's full of sibling-to-sibling and parent-to-child. "Arabian horse, Raffles, pedigree." Personally I think his barn name was Billy Joe Jimmy Bob...

*Bask is guilty of that, too.

[Set]

Horse racing is not about the horses. It's about the money.

[Anook]

I would sign your petition, but it requires you to give your email address and I really don't want to give it.
I gave it here, but you can't see it.