Trainer for Eight Belles doesn't blame sport for filly's death

She was doomed by her pedigree

Raise A Native (aka RAN) was a quarter-horse bodied big horse who threw blazing-fast progeny with a propensity for weak ankles.

If the instance of RAN appeared once in the pedigree, it didn't seem to really threaten the offspring.

But during his reign at stud, Mr. Prospector (by RAN) was bred to hundreds and hundreds of mares. RAN himself being a popular sire, had numerous sons and daughters.

Within a few years, we started seeing doubling of RAN in pedigrees and horses breaking down with weak ankles.

Fast forward to the 2008 Kentucky Derby, and Eight Belles runs her heart out with a TRIPLE OCCURRENCE of RAN in the pedigree.

Is it any wonder that we saw her two ankles snap like toothpicks?

Poor thing.

Stupid, stupid breeders, owners, and trainers!

I'm with PETA - this "sport" should be BANNED!

Oh, by the way, horses break legs in paddocks, in stalls, in all kinds of places and situations. The only way you could EVER prevent these tragedies is to get rid of horses altogether.

Which is the goal of animal rights activists. They believe the use of animals for any reason, including having them as pets, is exploitative.

Dale Earnhardt.- Nick Zito; are you so ignorant that you compare a man like Dale Earnhardt, with all of his decision making power to partake or not partake in death defying vocations against an innocent filly. She ran her guts out and "that's the way it is?" She ran on heart all right, forced into learning to race, pushed into a starter stall and whipped for her maximum effort. Your attitude which I'm sure matches all of the other trainers, owners and jockeys absolutely sickens me.
Why don't all of you fat cats take your money and develop a track of pillows if that will help the cause of keeping animals from injury. It's worth a try right?
My satisfaction is knowing that when you pass away you'll be looking up....far up from your hot little home at horses like Eight Belles and Barbaro running freely through heaven.
God bless these beautiful animals!

Susan, enough. No horse breaks his ankle riding gently around a ring, eating grass in a field and just enjoying life. If these horses weren't forced into running at full speed for extended periods of time on little ankles with thousands of pounds of weight coming down on them we wouldn't be seeing these things happen. On top of that, Eight Belles trainer has been suspended for drugging his horses..this man is the low of lows and is being worshiped today. When you've been ridden for a mile and a half and whipped please feel free to report back your experience of how fun it was.

Susan Nunes wrote:

Oh, by the way, horses break legs in paddocks, in stalls, in all kinds of places and situations. The only way you could EVER prevent these tragedies is to get rid of horses altogether.
Which is the goal of animal rights activists. They believe the use of animals for any reason, including having them as pets, is exploitative.

You know what Juli. Human athletes know how to deal with surfaces. Animals are pushed out on whatever surface justifies the means of the owner.

Why don't you spend all of your time finding out why these injuries occur and then start your horse racing career. And while you're at it, why don't you help OJ find out who killed his wife.

Juli S wrote:

I own race horses and have them on both types of tracks each have there inherent problems that need to be addressed. Keeping in mind that every athelete has to deal with injuries no matter what the surface. We just can't fix all the types of injuries to horses yet. I have lost some of mine to other types of complications they just don't get the front page of the paper but it hurts none the less. Awareness and caution are your best tools until we learn more about why these types of injuries occur. I'd be more concerned if we didn't care to ask the questions to begin with.

I found your comments most interesting. Inbreeding weakens a species, not strenthens it; could this really be true in this case??

xoxo Eight Belles wrote:

She was doomed by her pedigree
Raise A Native (aka RAN) was a quarter-horse bodied big horse who threw blazing-fast progeny with a propensity for weak ankles.
If the instance of RAN appeared once in the pedigree, it didn't seem to really threaten the offspring.
But during his reign at stud, Mr. Prospector (by RAN) was bred to hundreds and hundreds of mares. RAN himself being a popular sire, had numerous sons and daughters.
Within a few years, we started seeing doubling of RAN in pedigrees and horses breaking down with weak ankles.
Fast forward to the 2008 Kentucky Derby, and Eight Belles runs her heart out with a TRIPLE OCCURRENCE of RAN in the pedigree.
Is it any wonder that we saw her two ankles snap like toothpicks?
Poor thing.
Stupid, stupid breeders, owners, and trainers!
I'm with PETA - this "sport" should be BANNED!

Don't stick your head in the sand. There is definite blame to be assigned to this death and it has nothing to do with a brave horse running at full speed while being whipped. There's plenty of places to place the blame and they all have 2 legs, not 4.

Jo Dorsey wrote:

I agree. Synthetic tracks are not the way to go. Yup, it's an unfortunate thing to happen. But Belles wanted to finish the race... and win. That filly was powerful enough to beat 18 boys, and some of them are exceptional in their own rite. Folks need to understand that the spotlight is one the ones who truly put their heart in winning. They run for all that they are worth and more. No one is at fault for Saturday's tragedy. Eight Belles is now with Ruffian, the greatest filly of all time who ran her heart too. Don't bash racing. Do your research.

Richard M wrote:

Then, she collapsed and broke her ankles.... It is fair to believe she fainted.... There was nothing else left for her to gain strength to even cool down. It is a lesson for everyone to see a bigger picture than only what you want to see...The Law or Relativity!!

Nope - she did not "faint" instead she made several attempts to stand on her flailing snapped limbs, pushing the bones through the skin, grinding dirt into the open, bleeding stumps with the rest of the legs dangling by the sides.

Finally, a couple of out-riders grabbed her and pushed her down. She was still flailing her hopelessly broken legs.

Finally someone administered a fatal injection of what industry people call "the pink cocktail" (because it's a pinkish color in the syringe.)

Her dead carcass was dragged off the track into a van and carted away.

I am sure that her connections blubbered about "their loss" ... boo-boo-hooing about the sad state of affairs.

Let's ask if Equipoise had been injected into the filly ... or some other brand of steroids. Every day, horses are forced to get injected with steroids and painkillers and diuretics - the diuretics if they need them or not - because God Forbid - SOMEONE may have the edge on you by juicing THEIR horses - so let's shoot them up, because everyone else is doing it!

The owner may have lost his perspective by getting caught up in the excitement that he had a filly in the Kentucky Derby. WooHoo - maybe Eight Belles will be filly winner No. 4!

Push ... Push ... PUSH

Everyone got caught up with the stupid Kentucky Derby.

Push that filly with her big body and her genetically weak ankles.

Then ... when she's running way past the finish line with the jockey struggling to stop her .... snap snap - grinding those stumps-for-front-legs into the dirt. She didn't know what happened, she's in pain and her instinct is to run ... but all that happens is that her legs keep flopping to the sides. She cannot escape the pain. She is frightened. Men run to her and tackle her to the ground. She feels the needle stick ... and then she falls into a deep sleep until her heart stops beating.

What a wonderful sport of kings!

to all who think whipping a horse is sooo terible, i cant imagine that whip feels good, but that said it is much different when whipping a 1000+ lb horse vs a 150 man/woman.. also as far as making the m run 1 1/4 miles...runners run for miles and miles at their top speed all the time, 1 mile for a huge beast is a different story.

Do they ultrasound, mri or x-ray each horses legs before a race? Well, let's say it should be mandatory. Also a horse race laws should be mandated that horses should not be allowed to run another race after so many days so that they can recuperate.

i think that racing is a horrible sport. they start the horses before their bones have stopped developing and the horses are so trusting that they will do anything you ask of them.
this could have been prevented if the trainers and or owners had taken the proper choices in which race to put her in. obviously the derby was too much, and it seems that they were so money and fame hungry that they risked the safety of the horse.(which is always more important than money or fame)

S Jokela hit the nail on the head. These horses in the Kentucky Derby are babies, only three years old. They aren't fully done growing, and starting them under saddle at two completely destroys any possibility of soundness later in life.

@ K from LA: The only humane thing to do was to euthanize Eight Belles. Horses are thousand pound animals that can't be compared to dogs. There are certain injuries that will never be fixed. It would have taken months of standing in a stall before she could walk or trot again. Plus, the chance that she would just get hurt again would be very very high.

Horses do "run their hearts out" when their humans tell
them to! Comparing horses to human athletes (racecar drivers) is absurd. Human athletes CHOOSE to be in the risky competition. Animals do not choose!
They are used and exploited.
Animals are innocent victims of human greed and
corruption. And the breeding is apparently for the advantage of winning and not for the safety and well-being of the horse. Is this sport? I am sickened at the prospect of more beautiful animals being bred against nature into distorted proportions so people can win money! And if the horse is shattered? Oh well.
Shame on you all.

OK- All of you who are bashing horse racing, how cruel and inhumane it is- think about this. There are horses who have been out playing and frolicking in fields, at their own speed and still never make it out of that field, because accidents happen. Bones break, ligaments and tendons tear, accidents happen. They happen ALL the time. It just does not always happen in the bright light of the media coverage where the whole world is watching- So for the people that have no experience with racing other than watching the "big" races, or with horses in general for that matter, realize that these horses, much like human athletes, LOVE what they do. They are very well cared for. Unfortunately, because horses are so big, there is a limit to what injuries are actually fixable. The majority of the time, if you try, a secondary complication will take its toll. This was not even an option for Belles as with both front legs compromised there is no way she could have supported herself to recover, even with aid, such as a sling. It is very sad, she was a gorgeous filly, whom I'm sure made her trainer and owners very proud. She went up against great horses and proved she was one of the best. They made their final decision in her best interest at heart, though I'm sure it was not an easy one.

oh and xoxo Eight Belles,

Can we really prevent the breeding of weak legged horses? Are race horse breeders and owners that blind to the defects? someone should write a bloodline reference book on weak legged horses. Or the thoroughbred race horse registery should get tough on the subject and prevent these horses from producing offspring, or announce to the unsuspecting brood- stud owners there are genetic leg defects about to be crossed into their bloodlines.

We Are Not Guilty-Right wrote:

I found your comments most interesting. Inbreeding weakens a species, not strenthens it; could this really be true in this case??
<quoted text>

It is true ... look what happened to German Shepherds and canine hip dysplasia!

Horses breaking down ... it's getting to be a common occurrence. Chelokee broke down the day before. They just don't make horses like Secretariat, Seattle Slew or Affirmed anymore.

Big Brown ran 1¼ miles on a fast track in 2:01.82. In other words, Big Brown ran a clunker ... A fast track like Saturday's may have improved Secretariat's time of 1:59-2/5 to who knows what insane record. The track was lightning fast from the crew squeezing all the rain out of it in time for the Derby.

Big Brown may very well may go on to score the elusive Triple Crown ... not because he's such a superstar - but because he is a better-than-average horse in a year of so-so horses.

Should Big Brown win the TC, breeders will flock to him hoping to score big at the sales. And just like weak ankles in the breed, we will probably see more and more epoxy hooves in the future. It's all because no one can see past the dollar signs.

And we ridicule puppy mills. Ha!

I think it's just horrible what happened to her.

just horrible. it stinks. i picked her to win. and look what happened

We Are Not Guilty-Right wrote:

Susan, enough. No horse breaks his ankle riding gently around a ring, eating grass in a field and just enjoying life. If these horses weren't forced into running at full speed for extended periods of time on little ankles with thousands of pounds of weight coming down on them we wouldn't be seeing these things happen. On top of that, Eight Belles trainer has been suspended for drugging his horses..this man is the low of lows and is being worshiped today. When you've been ridden for a mile and a half and whipped please feel free to report back your experience of how fun it was.
<quoted text>

I am SO GLAD that you can say with SUCH certainty that NO horse breaks a bone playing in the field. Can you please tell me how then, my horse that did exactly that ?? he could not be fixed. I would have done anything to fix him, it was not an option. He was young, never even ridden, and in a freak accident had a unrepairable fracture. One minute fine, playing, the next not. DO NOT say that these things do not happen. YOU obviously DO NOT KNOW.

ultraviolet wrote:

oh and xoxo Eight Belles,
Can we really prevent the breeding of weak legged horses? Are race horse breeders and owners that blind to the defects? someone should write a bloodline reference book on weak legged horses. Or the thoroughbred race horse registry should get tough on the subject and prevent these horses from producing offspring, or announce to the unsuspecting brood- stud owners there are genetic leg defects about to be crossed into their bloodlines.

I wish we could - but when someone has the change to earn 6 or 7 figures in a sales ring by breeding a genetic mutant - they will run like lemmings to have a chance at that cash prize. Pedigree analysts have their behavior shaped by the paychecks they cash, so their reality is skewed.

Pretty soon, mutants are mated to mutants and we get to see the resulting disasters on TV. What a great visual sales aid for the sport of kings.

My guess is that the populace will create video requiems, write tributes and poems, and shed a few tears ... but then, the fuzzy Mint-Julep heads will clear up, people will go to work on Monday and forget about Eight Belles.

Meanwhile - the industry pumps out more and more genetic defects who will struggle on broken stumps until someone shoots pink cocktails into their frightened bodies and drag them off the track.