Stoppage time

kings or criminals?

Yesterday, though, I found myself a little startled by the Amish horse buggies, even though this Maryland transplant had seen it all before.

As I watched four coffee-brown horses trot toward me, i glanced at their legs, overgrown with hair and as thick in the shins as most men are in the thighs. Then, I put the mental picture next to the thoroughbreads I've seen, both in person hanging along the rail at tracks in Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia, and on television, like at last Saturday's Kentucky Derby.

Images of Eight Belles' shattered ankles, which I conjured in imagination, and of Barbaro's break, one everyone on the planet could see.

Horse racing has always been a dangerous sport. But until I put the three slides together, I never fully grasped how dangerous it's made by the breeding that drives it. The creatures perusing around Turbotville are hardly the same animal as those I used to put ten dollars on at Charlestown.

I love to be at the track for the thrill and the tradition, but will never understand a Beyer speed figure. I do get, though, that these kinds of breakdowns hare happening more than ever. And the experts all seem to agree breeding is as much a factor as any other.

To make a long story short, horses are now bred to be sold first and raced second, meaning more weak ones fall through cracks, and often to their deaths. The ones that dont, says the Washington Post's Andrew Beyer, run less often and are frequently riddled with more health problems, all in the name of finding the perfect combination of robust heart and muscles with slight skeletal build.

The regression fallacy we were tought in statistics class seems to be a farce. After two very public breakdowns in three years, if a fading sport wants to stave off extinction, something must be done.

Some favor the use of polytrack, a synthetic surface making its way to more racecourses throughout the country. But as someone drawn to the sport for its history and connection to an older america, I can only see it as creating another problem. If the surface proves safer, will that mean even less caution when bringing up young horses? Meaning, in the end, the same number of catastrophies?

The other solution is to greatly heighten the health requirements needed to enter a horse in competitive racing. I have no idea how you do this, and if we can't find away to eradicate drugs in baseball — a phenomenon most of us understand — i have little hope for a massive public inquest into what is now part cultural relic, and part niche pastime.

I wish I could offer solutions. But i know how slow the buggies move along route 54. And even I, who grew up loving the races, don't have the time to be watching them.