When a great horse goes down, everyone seems to come together, funneling toward a greater good and higher purpose. We rush to fix this beautiful and broken sport with our megaphones, our picket signs and our finger-pointing.
So it was no surprise that when Eight Belles was put down, just moments after crossing the Kentucky Derby finish line, the list of culprits couldn't grow fast enough. Overbreeding, track surfaces, drugs. But most curious of all was the finger pointed at another racehorse, one that died 41 years ago. How could this be?
Native Dancer was known as the Gray Ghost. Raised and trained at Sagamore Farms, near Glyndon, he was the best racehorse to ever call Maryland home. Not only that, but he was also the most iconic and celebrated horse of his time - Native Dancer was, in fact, once on the cover of Time. He won the 1953 Preakness Stakes, Belmont Stakes and Travers Stakes, and Blood-Horse magazine named him the seventh-best racehorse of the 20th century.
But Native Dancer retired in 1954, so why all the commotion now, with his career long over, his legacy long cemented?
Before this year's Kentucky Derby, The Wall Street Journal pointed out that all 20 starters in the field descended from Native Dancer. (In fact, an estimated 75 percent of today's thoroughbreds can trace their roots back to the Gray Ghost, including the past 14 Derby winners.) The initial report warned, though, that Native Dancer's offspring might be prone to foot or leg injuries, pointing out that Native Dancer stopped racing as a 4-year-old and Barbaro was from the same bloodline.
"Like hemophilia in the Russian royal family, Native Dancer's line has a tragic flaw," the paper reported.
The suggestion was seemingly confirmed at Churchill Downs, when the filly Eight Belles, Native Dancer's great-great-great-granddaughter, suffered compound fractures in both front ankles after the race. The Wall Street Journal followed its report, again connecting familial dots from Native Dancer to Barbaro to Eight Belles and asking whether inbreeding has corrupted a champion bloodline.
"There's just no reason to think the flaws go back to Native Dancer," Alfred G. Vanderbilt said yesterday.
Vanderbilt's great-grandfather, Isaac Emerson, the inventor of Bromo-Seltzer, gave Sagamore Farm as a gift to Vanderbilt's grandmother, Margaret Emerson, who in turn gave it to his father, Alfred Vanderbilt II, as a 21st birthday present. Vanderbilt's father also once owned Pimlico Race Course, but Sagamore Farm and Native Dancer were always his pride and joy, which is partly why it's so distressing to see the bloodline called into question so many years later.
