A math problem: If a thoroughbred racehorse weighs roughly 1,500 pounds, is supported by ankles the size of a homo sapien’s and runs at speeds approaching 45 miles per hour while carrying a human on his back who weighs up to 126 pounds, how long would it take for that horse to break a leg?
Extra credit: If that steed has been administered a drug to mask pain from some previous discomfort, a common practice in the sport, to what extent would that increase the likelihood of serious injury? Could it be calculated that racing on a dirt track, as opposed to grass, further shortens the animal’s life expectancy?
As a lesson on reacting professionally to unexpected distress at an otherwise entertaining event, I show my Hofstra University sportswriting students the 1949 New York Sun newspaper column “Death of a Racehorse.”
“They were going into the turn, and now Air Lift was starting to go,” W.C. Heinz wrote that July day, “when suddenly he slowed, a horse stopping, and below in the stands you could hear a sudden cry, as the rest left him, still trying to run but limping, his jockey—Dave Gorman—half falling, half sliding off.
“‘He broke a leg!’ somebody, holding binoculars to his eyes, shouted at the press box. ‘He broke a leg!’”
Heinz so effectively informed his readers—setting the scene, portraying the various characters’ reactions, describing the predictable result of putting the horse out of his misery—that Ernest Hemingway called the piece “a classic of American literature.”
“Gilman had the halter and Catlett had the gun, shaped like a bell with the handle at the top,” Heinz wrote. “The bell he placed, the crowd silent, on the colt’s forehead, just between the eyes. The colt stood still, and then Catlett, with the hammer in his other hand, struck the handle of the bell. There was a short, sharp sound and the colt toppled onto his left side, his eyes staring, his legs straight out, the free legs quivering.”
They don’t shoot horses at the racetrack any more. But then as now, if a horse breaks a leg, recovery from surgery is virtually impossible. Horses are heavy animals who spend most of their time on their feet, even sleeping, and the lack of movement during potential healing only leads to infection and pain. The only change these days, compared to what H.C. Heinz chronicled 74 years ago, is that thoroughbreds who suffer broken legs in action are put down by a veterinarian’s lethal injection, right there trackside, after an ambulance arrives and a large screen is placed around the proceedings.
And here comes the 2023 Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown series, after seven horses died during Kentucky Derby week, two of them on race day, and the Derby’s morning-line favorite, Forte, was scratched hours before post time after veterinarians declared him unfit to run.
Those dark acts recalled 2008—coincidentally, the year that W.C. Heinz died of natural causes at 93—when a filly named Eight Belles, steps after finishing second in the Derby, broke down and was humanely destroyed. Two weeks later, when Big Brown added the Preakness title to his Derby win, the worst fears of casual horse racing fans—and, indeed, the racing industry—were not realized as all 12 thoroughbreds got safely through the event.
Just two years earlier, Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro had shattered his leg in 27 places during the Preakness and, despite surgery and massive efforts to rehabilitate him, was euthanized eight months later.
About that math problem, then: Horseracing experts acknowledge that what makes thoroughbreds so formidable is what makes them so flimsy. Engineered to run fast on spindly little legs by the breeding process, they have been described as a genetic mistake—running too fast with a frame that is too large on legs far too small.
According to The Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database, between 700 and 800 racehorses are injured and die every year, averaging just under two breakdowns per 1,000 starts. That fact flies under the radar for most people—that is, those of the non-wagering persuasion—who tend to believe that a horse is just a horse. Except during the Triple Crown season, when far more of the public pay attention to the sport.
The Triple Crown format itself has been called into question for three high-stakes races within five weeks even though horse trainers admit that at least 30 days between competitions is preferable. Then again, the sport’s insiders argue that the “tradition” of two weeks between the Derby and Preakness and three between the Preakness and Belmont Stakes is a great part of the charm, separating mere racehorses from super horses—and ought to be maintained as a lifeblood for the sport’s popularity. (Nobody has asked the horses what they think.)
I don’t (as the saying goes) have a horse in this race. But W.C. Heinz summed up some unavoidable feelings, both inside and outside the sport, with his sentence following a description of Air Lift’s euthanization in that 1949 column:
“‘Aw —-‘ someone said.”