The Eight Belles aftermath: Sorting out the key issues from the tragedy

When Eight Belles fell down after finishing second at the Derby, she had suffered condylar fractures of both front ankles. AP

For journalists, Kentucky Derby chaos begins in earnest when the race ends. We watch the race from some less-than-ideal location (we are given sensational viewing spots on the balcony at the front of the press box, but it is nearly impossible to report quickly after the race from that perch, because of the crush of humanity between the sixth-floor balcony and racetrack-level winner's circle). Then we scramble to find quick and genuine reaction, before time dulls emotions.

I have viewed past Derbies on a tiny television in a small room off the entrance tunnel, on a slightly larger TV in the tunnel itself, on a big screen in the paddock. Last Saturday, I watched from a trackside railing across from the sixteenth pole, 100 yards short of the finish line, as Big Brown exploded at the head of the stretch. When he passed in front of me, the storyline was clear and singular: Super Horse. How quickly that changed.

I ducked under the outside rail and onto the track and began snagging quick comments. Winning trainer Rick Dutrow ran past and embraced friends en route to the televised trophy presentation on the infield. Another writer stopped me and said, "There's a horse down on the backside."

The next five minutes are a blur. I see veterinarian Dr. Larry Bramlage being interviewed by NBC's Kenny Rice. I don't know it then, but he's delivering the news that Eight Belles has been humanely destroyed. I hear this moments later from another source. Then I'm standing on the infield with four other writers, Pat Forde of ESPN.com, Steve Haskin of the Blood-Horse and Rick Bozich and Eric Crawford of the Lousiville Courier-Journal. Everybody looks a step off. When the Derby ends, you throw yourself into report-the-race mode. Now the story is unclear. Super Horse. Dead Horse. Two stories, intruding on each other.

It is a familiar feeling. Hours later in the Churchill Downs press box, another writer will say to me: "Same old story. Horse wins, horse goes down. How many times have we written this?"

Let's see. Just in the last couple of years, on major race days with millions of people watching, there is, of course, Barbaro in the 2006 Preakness. Pine Island in the 2006 Breeders' Cup. George Washington in the 2007 Breeders' Cup. That's a lot. News coverage unfolds predictably. Newspaper columnists who attend few races call the sport barbaric and stop just short of calling for its immediate abolition. Special interest groups get involved. In this case, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has demanded sweeping change in the sport of thoroughbred racing, including a ban on whipping horses and the installation of synthetic surfaces at all racetracks.

It is a noisy news world out there, and when a horse falls publicly and dies, it rouses the forces of multimedia. Beautiful, innocent animal; subculture of wealth and privilege. We are talking large target, here. Let's sort out a few of the central issues.

• On a primal level, it's easy to damn the institution of horse racing, because there's no arguing that the horses signed up to spend 23 hours a day in a tiny stall and get ridden to exhaustion for others' fame and money. Two days before the Derby, I was talking to trainer Michael Matz, who famously worked with Barbaro. His 3-year-old Visionaire was scheduled to run in the Kentucky Derby. Visionaire had delivered good results at times, and other times had not battled through adversity. "He's a smart little horse," said Matz, smiling. Meaning: He understands that he will be bathed and fed whether he finished first or fourth.

"Being too smart,'' trainer Bill Mott told me the next day, "is not always a good thing in a horse.''

So we can accept there is a moral disconnect here. Racehorses love to run, but perhaps they would prefer to run in a meadow of tall grass. However, they wouldn't exist if they didn't race, because they are all carefully bred for that purpose. Without racing, there would have been no Barbaro, no Eight Belles. Do the horses enjoy racing? I don't know.

• We don't know yet the full story of what happened to Eight Belles. She fell down and suffered condylar fractures of both front ankles. She could not be saved. Why did this happen? I have not yet found a source who can tell me they have ever seen a similar occurrence on the racetrack. "I have never seen anything like it in my life,'' said California veterinarian Dawn Hunkin, echoing the words of many others.

Horses do not finish races, gallop out another half-mile, while slowing down and suddenly break both front legs. It just doesn't happen, except that it did. PETA has launched an assault on jockey Gabriel Saez, on the grounds that Eight Belles was injured during the race and should have been pulled up earlier. Eight Belles' trainer, Larry Jones, strongly disagreed. Three-time Derby-winning trainer Bob Baffert watched the race in California and told me yesterday, "When she passed under the wire, she looked great; she was reaching out with her front legs. Sometimes you can tell when a horse is struggling. They skid along, putting their feet straight down. She looked sensational going by the line.''

(In a similar sense, Barbaro's injury was also unusual: A broken hind leg 15 seconds into a race. That doesn't happen, either. Except that it did).

Owner Rick Porter has asked that a necropsy be performed on Eight Belles. Baffert, for one, is anxious to see if perhaps she suffered some sort of cardiac or pulmonary event that caused her to stumble and break her legs. On Monday morning, Baffert said jockey Corey Nakatani, riding Colonel John, told him that when he passed Eight Belles on the turn, he heard the filly whinnying possibly in distress.

Of course, it's all a guessing game until the necropsy is finished and the results made public.

• Eight Belles' breakdown has quickened the call for the installation of synthetic racing surfaces. Breeding of U.S. racehorses has changed in the last two decades. Where once there was an emphasis on breeding durable animals who could race resolutely at distances up to a mile and a half, now the goal is to breed fast horses who can show some brilliance in a short career and retire to breed more fast horses. The result is a breed that many people in the game think is more fragile.

"There's no question that we have seen an emphasis on precocity and speed,'' says Bill Casner, co-owner of WinStar Farm, whose Colonel John was the No. 2 betting choice in the Kentucky Derby after winning the Santa Anita Derby. "You see faster horses running on smaller feet and smaller limbs. To me, that's another position in support of synthetic surfaces.''

The synthetic vs. dirt argument is all over horse racing. It seems intuitive that synthetic tracks are safer, because they are softer and more forgiving, but research is incomplete and anecdotal evidence spotty. During the week of the Kentucky Derby, Big Brown's trainer, Rick Dutrow, said that his horse would get just as many injuries on synthetic surfaces as on dirt, but the injuries are different. The Jockey Club has overseen the formation of an on-track injury reporting system. Based on less than one year's worth of statistics at 34 racetracks, The Jockey Club reported in April that fatality rates were 1.47 deaths per 1,000 starts on synthetic surfaces and 2.03 deaths per 1,000 starts on dirt. That is a significant difference.

Much more research is needed and the racing industry is comprised of splintered jurisdictions around the country, with no central office. It is unclear how synthetic surfaces affect wagering. At Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky., this spring's three-week boutique meet saw a whopping decline of 17 percent in handle, which some critics attributed to the difficulty of handicapping races on the synthetics, where traditional speed figures are nearly meaningless.

Yet other jurisdictions have reported an increase in field size and daily handle because more horses are healthy. The entire issue is in its infancy.

Horse breakdowns are in truth a complex issue, but a mainstream audience doesn't want to hear that. On Sunday morning, I flew home from Kentucky to my home in Connecticut. I went to one of my son's sporting events. I walked in the neighborhood. People everywhere wanted to talk about the Derby, but not about Big Brown's epic victory. They wanted to talk about the filly. Why did they have to kill her on the track? (Because her injuries were too severe; horses are not people). How did this happen? Isn't it awful?

The Triple Crown will go on. Big Brown looks like he has a very good chance to win it. As it happens, bigger questions will linger, with no easy answers.