The gates fly open, the horses charge, then snap. I rewind the tape. Snap. Again. Snap. It becomes hard to watch. I wonder why, eight months later I'm still playing this video.
Barbaro, the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner, shattered his right hind leg less than an eighth of a mile into the Preakness, the second race of the Triple Crown in mid May. A devastating and life threatening injury to a horse, he fought for his life through multiple risky surgeries.
The horse that America came to know as a fighter and a survivor endured having 26 pins placed into his injured leg, and months later due to infection had a portion of his leg removed. After an up and down battle that saw his health waver and rebound, he was put to sleep on Monday afternoon following a slew of complications stemming from a Laminitis infection.
If you have ever broken a bone, you know that nauseating feeling that wells up in the pit of your stomach. While viewing the film, that same feeling came rushing back to me.
I wasn't feeling the pain that Barbaro endured, but throughout this whole ordeal I always wondered, why?
Now, there is something to be said for the life saving efforts that countless veterinarians and volunteers contributed, but I wonder if maybe we just don't push animals a little too far. How comfortable was he? Would he have had a quality life?
Moreover it seemed to boil down to one simple question: how much is he worth?
In his short but wildly successful career he brought in just shy of 3.4 million dollars in purse winnings and posted six wins in as many starts coming into the Preakness. Aside from their racing careers, premier animals such as Barbaro would bring in quite a bounty in the breeding market after being retired from racing. It isn't na??ve to believe that a horse of his physique and pedigree would have been able to bring in millions of dollars on the stud market.
I surely hope this was not the motivation for extending a painful existence for such a majestic animal. I truthfully believe that Barbaro's owners deeply cared about his well-being, but it broaches the subject of how people may or may not carelessly exploit the life of another creature for financial gain or entertainment.
In an industry where money flows as easily as the mint juleps at Churchill Downs, the priorities of the parties involved may come into question. It should be noted that until 2005 the owner of the winning horse of Triple Crown (Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes) was given a five million dollar bonus from the VISA Corporation.
Television is also a huge market for horse racing with NBC holding rights to televise the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness while ESPN holds the broadcast rights to the Belmont Stakes. With television comes advertising, and with advertising comes revenue.
Gambling is by far the largest entity that links money to horse racing. It is seldom that you can enter a city and not find an Off Track Betting establishment where wagers are continually placed on races throughout the world. The American Gaming Association said that in 2005 the amount bet on horse races toppled the 3 billion dollar plateau.
It is impossible to remove gambling and monetary aspects from racing. Tracks from Belmont to Batavia are mired in a sport driven by money where the competitors show no gains from their efforts.
The animals that give their lives towards racing deserve to be treated in a manner where their value is not taken into consideration. No animal should be forced to live an unnatural life for the gain of another.
We can hope that through his trials and tribulations Barbaro not only carried the hearts and minds of an American populace but that he also bore the torch of a crusade to illuminate his situation and that of multitudes of horses before him.
A dollar amount should never influence issues of life and compassion.
