Kentucky Derby is today

[rgG]

Oh man, I am so glad that I didn't watch, if that is the way it ended. How tragic.

[deckeda]

^^ You wouldn't have really seen it happen on TV. A replay showed part of the fall mostly out-of-frame. Happened during the warm-down soon after the race ended. Don't know what caused her to fall ... it happened close to Big Brown, and BB got spooked and actually tossed his rider.

Eight Belles was put down less than 5 mins after the fall; they ran equine ambulances onto the field, shielding her from NBC's cameras. She didn't suffer long.

Gute: doesn't appear to have been luck. BB was favored, and in the home stretch just fricken walked away with it.

Later, during the winner's ceremony they replayed the race in slo mo with the rider giving a play-by-play describing exactly what was happening to BB and why and where, describing what his movements were telling BB, how BB was reacting etc. --- you can't know any of that during the race watching it live but was interesting to watch/hear later.

[Don C]

wurm noted that the race lasts about two minutes and the broadcast lasts about two hours. Well, the Derby Festival lasts two weeks. It's a fun time to be around Louisville! Starting off with a major fireworks show, then races in many varieties including a mini and a full marathon, hot air balloon races, a run for the rose' (wait staff running with trays of wine), bed races, a steamboat race. http://www.kdf.org/

Only the horse race is serious. The rest is just springtime fun.

By the way, something I did not know until I moved to the area, the Kentucky Derby is race number 10 on a card of 11 races. Folks go to the track for a full day, not just for 2 minutes. Lots of celebrities, lots of plane ol' folk having a good time. Around here, the Derby is the day for out of towners. Friday is the Kentucky Oaks race for fillies and is considered The Day for locals. Two inches of rain yesterday made this year's Oaks something less than a Chamber of Commerce day!

The loss of the filly today does take some of the fun out of it.

Whether racing is cruelty to animals is certainly something to be considered. Very few of these animals would be bred and born were it not for the industry so there is some tradeoff between no life at all and a life of racing. Winnners do have a good life after racing; as is true with humans, less successful adults don't have is so good although some of the barns in the Bluegrass are pretty nice quarters!

[ka jowct]

Whether racing is cruelty to animals is certainly something to be considered. Very few of these animals would be bred and born were it not for the industry so there is some tradeoff between no life at all and a life of racing. Winnners do have a good life after racing;

Don't assume that the winners have a good life. At least one horse who won the Derby ended up as horse meat in Japan.

I love horses, and used to love racing, but the more I know about it, the the more it offends me. I don't think it would continue to exist as a "sport" without the gambling side of it, and killing a bunch of horses just so that people can gamble turns my stomach. I don't mean just the animals who are killed on the track, as this poor filly was today; I mean all the horses who don't pan out as breeders or racers who end up being slaughtered. It's disgusting.

If humans want to compete, they should have the decency to do it directly, not vicariously through animals who have no choice in the matter.

[Jim Williams]

Eight Belles trained here for a few months at the stable behind my home in Aiken.

She was, to put it simply, magnificent.

BTW, ka jowct, my daughter shares your view.

[Jim Williams]

NYTimes Editorial 05/06/2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/opinio...e4.html?th&emc=th