The breakdown of Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby has reignited the debate over whether breeders are sacrificing durability for speed.
Young horses breaking down on the track has become all too common. Eight Belles is the fourth high-profile thoroughbred to suffer catastrophic injury on the track in the past two years. Since the 2006 Preakness, that includes Barbaro, George Washington and Chelokee, who survived his mishap last weekend at Churchill Downs in Louisville.
"We are not in crisis, but we are approaching a crisis situation at a relatively rapid rate," said Dr. Larry Bramlege, the attending veterinarian at the last weekend's Kentucky Derby when Eight Belles went down and at the 2006 Preakness when Barbaro pulled up. "For a while, we ran clean - for six or seven years. And there has never been a fatality in the Kentucky Derby, that we can determine. Now, this crops up in our most prominent events.
"I think we are approaching crisis on two levels. One, a crisis in public confidence in racing. And two, I do believe we've disregarded durability long enough that it has become a crisis.
"If when you're breeding and you don't select soundness over a long period of time, you lose by default for not selecting it. What we're seeing is a less durable athlete with potentially more ability and a lesser degree of soundness."
Dr. Tom Bowman, a veterinarian and general manager and partner of the Northview Stallion Station in Chesapeake City, doesn't blame track injuries on breeding. But he does have a strong opinion about the direction breeding has taken.
"For a long time, the thoroughbred was bred as a horse that can go a distance and take your breath away," Bowman said. "We are starting to sacrifice some of those qualities for a short racing career and cheap speed overall.
"We're not selecting animals that are necessarily less sound; we're selecting animals to do things that are much more difficult to do - run real fast, real hard. When we do that, we're selecting for horses that are less durable."
Tracing bloodlines and experimenting with genetics has long been the breeders' game. No breeder wants to produce an unsound runner.
Jim Steele, president of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association, who runs a breeding business at Shamrock Farm in Carroll County, calls it a consequence of breeding, not a design.
