LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Most mornings, the Kentucky Derby happy talk has been the happiest it has been in years.
After proving that the Triple Crown had not gone the way of the rotary phone, Bob Baffert is back for more. He’ll come to Churchill Downs Saturday with not one, not two, but three precocious horses capable of making Baffert the first trainer in more than 60 years to win six Derbies.
Hardboots still melt at the sound of “My Ol’ Kentucky Home.”
Jockey Mike Smith wants his third Derby. Shug McGaughey is determined to train his second. You’ll hear Hall of Famers like Bill Mott and Steve Asmussen squeal like toddlers if they win their first.
The Churchill Downs grandstand gets taller, wider and fancier. The best tickets fetch premium prices. The red carpet has TMZ hyperventilating.
Sources say Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and his posse are primed to enjoy the Derby as much as they enjoy beating the Steelers.
Have I forgotten anything about the mile-and-a-quarter race that will crackle over the Churchill racing surface late Saturday afternoon?
Just this: Racing needs a clean, competitive and injury-free day.
No breakdowns. No spills. No euthanized horses.
Derby 145 has already lost two horses, including the likely favorite, Omaha Beach, with injuries. The last thing it needs is an ugly visual on international television.
The sport won’t be holding its breath for two minutes and change. It will be holding its breath all weekend.
“It’s been fun this week,” Baffert said. “It’s been fun being out at the barn every morning and seeing all the people who love to come out and watch the horses. It’s been a relief to be out of [Santa Anita].”
Santa Anita and horse racing suffered this spring. In just over three months, 23 horses died at the southern California track that is the home to talented horsemen such as Baffert, Richard Mandella and Doug O’Neill. Four horses died during the 16-day spring meet in Keeneland.
Concern from animal rights groups percolated into political pressure that was also stirred by casual fans asking why so many horses died. The discussion escalated from a debate about the ethics of whipping horses and administering medication that masks pain.
The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Sports Illustrated all opened Derby Week by reporting detailed stories on the complex challenges horse racing faces as it tries to protect its spot in the sports entertainment world.
The headline in the New York Times was particularly stinging:
“Horse Deaths Are Threatening the Racing Industry; Is the Sport Obsolete?”
Obsolete?
Obsolete is a harsh word, one that critics have pinned on boxing. It’s a word and a story that inspired its share of bristles on the Churchill backside this week.
“I think we’re all concerned, we’re all trying to improve and we’re all trying to make it a safer sport,” trainer Todd Pletcher said.
“But, you know, the one thing is when you have Bucket List events like the Kentucky Derby, I think we’ll always be OK.”
OK? Maybe.
But racing should aspire to be greater than OK. The debate about horse safety has been as overdue in racing as the concussion discussion was in football.
The culture moves. Racing can’t pretend it doesn’t. A lack of marketing imagination and decisive leadership over the last four decades pushed the game into the niche sport role where it exists today. It can’t risk not paying attention what critics are saying today.
When I covered my first Kentucky Derby 1979, it was a Must Cover event for sportswriting titans like Red Smith, Jim Murray, Furman Bisher, Blackie Sherrod and Dave Kindred. It slipped from Must Cover status many years ago.
What the culture is telling racing today is the game must reexamine its policies on medication, especially on race day, while continuing research on the safest possible racing surfaces. At Santa Anita, Baffert and others argued that the issue was excessive rainfall that made the racing surface too hard. Regardless, too many horses died.
“I’ve never seen so many trainers depressed and beaten down,” Baffert said. “We were just waiting and wondering. We didn’t know what our future was going to be. Are we going to have jobs? What’s going to happen?”
A day like Saturday can serve a reminder of the sights, sounds and smells that make horse racing such a glorious game. It is a game of hard-working earnest people as well as determined animals, a game for the multi-million dollar owner as well as the $2 bettor and a game that will inspire 170,000 people to scream their lungs out as the Derby field thunders into the stretch.
But it is also a game that needs to be the safest game it can be, especially on Saturday with the sporting world watching.
The Block News Alliance consists of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, and television station WDRB in Louisville, Ky.
First Published: May 3, 2019, 7:48 p.m.
