Horse racing needs fixing, not banning

A horse was injured and immediately euthanized in this year's running of the Kentucky Derby, and the cry went out that horse racing is cruel and should be outlawed, scuttled, sent to the barn.

No it shouldn't. Reformed? Yes, in some ways. But outlawed? Why? Because of the report that something like 1.6 horses is killed out of every 1,000 horses that start a race? That's not news you want to cheer about, but is hardly evidence of vast disregard for animals worth huge amounts of money. Most owners would hardly embrace a system that would too easily make their investments worthless, even if these people were all cold-hearted, money-grubbing villains.

What the severest critics do not seem to get is that creatures die, all of them, including horses that are not bred for horse racing. And my guess is that few horses receive better overall care than thoroughbred racehorses, whose every muscle twitch is finely analyzed from the day of birth until racing and breeding days are done.

To suppose them unhappy because they are trained and ridden and made to go fast on crowded racetracks is absurd. Read a book like "Seabiscuit," or listen to horse lovers who have been in the racing business all their lives, and you know that the horses often love to run, that some love the attention and some seem to take pride in racing and, not only that, but in winning.

They are born for this thing, you find caring trainers saying, and the worst cruelty just might be to get in the way, especially since they would still be in danger. As one horse breeder has observed in a newspaper piece, accidents also occur when these spirited creatures are racing each other in pastures.

But as expensively coddled as the horses often are -- the same breeder mentions a $30,000 operation for one -- the case for making some changes in the sport does seem compelling. It is emotionally wrenching to learn amidst the excitement of the Derby that a magnificent, beautiful horse like Eight Belles broke her ankles and was swiftly put out of her misery, and so you listen when some say racing can be made safer.

The change some insist should be a priority seems to a layman the most difficult, namely breeding the horses as much for stability as speed. A strong horse that's unlikely to be much of a competitor is going to entice few buyers, and it will obviously require something more than a snap of the fingers to breed animals that are less prone to serious injury but also a genuine threat on the track.

Less challenging would be to make any changes in those tracks that are consistent with what the best science says is least hazardous, or to keep horses from racing too much too young, when their bodies are least able to deal with the physical stress.

Commentators warn that if some such adjustments do not decrease the fatalities in racing, a sport that has already been fading in public enthusiasm could find itself in dire jeopardy even without laws bringing it to an end, and I suspect that's true.

What also strikes me as true is that there are always those who want to dictate to the rest of us what we can and cannot do, who will opt for the most extreme measure at virtually any provocation and who do not get it that practically all physical activities, both human and animal, entail some degree of risk. Let such people have their way too often, and the world will shrink to the meager limits of their understanding.

(Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay(at)aol.com.)