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Breeding Sorrow
Gene Lyons 5/7/2008
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Every time I witness something like the breakdown of Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby, I tell myself I've watched my last horse race. Particularly after the filly's gallant stretch run. For a long moment it appeared she might actually catch Big Brown before the wire. The sight of veterinary vans encircling the stricken animal to prevent spectators from seeing her euthanized was unbearable.

Unlike some, I can't criticize NBC's coverage, because I couldn't watch it. My wife was crying like a child. Partly that's because we're horse people, a passion we came to relatively recently, causing us to rearrange our lives. I've come to feel that places that are no good for horses aren't particularly good for people. The most powerful surge of homesickness I've ever experienced struck me one humid evening in New York City some years ago. Walking up Fifth Avenue, I was surprised by the heavy, pungent odor of horses -- the lineup of carriage horses along Central Park South, waiting patiently to take tourists clip-clopping through the park. I wanted to hail a cab to the airport on the spot.

Not that caring for a couple of middle-aged geldings gives me any special insights into the so-called "Sport of Kings." Well, maybe a few. First, tragedies
like Eight Belles' death are an inherent part of horse racing. They can't be entirely prevented. Riding horses under any circumstances can be dangerous. When he first became acquainted with my quarter-horse Rusty, my farrier, an outspoken individualist like many people you meet around barns, warned that he was too headstrong and athletic for a middle-aged novice.

"You keep messin' with that big sumb***h," was how Tom put it, "and he's gonna hurt you."

Problem was, I'd already bought him. Not long afterward, I'd saved Rusty from a near-fatal colic attack on a 104-degree July day. It's hard to describe my emotions when he stopped while I was walking him out -- he'd been staggering, in a daze -- to nibble on clover. He was going to live. He drank something like eight half buckets of salty water at half-hour intervals that night -- roughly 150 pounds of lost fluid.

So 10 years later, I reminded Tom that while Rusty had scared me half to death -- stampeding with a deer herd toward a barbed-wire fence, for example -- he'd never actually hurt me, apart from black eyes caused by low branches.

"Yeah, well, you, me and him are all gettin' old," Tom allowed. "If he kills you now, it won't be on purpose."
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Horses for Courses
By O'Farrell  - The Illawarra Mercury, Australia  * Posted 08/21/2004
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