A world away from the smoke and mirrors at Pimlico yesterday, death visited Parx. This, in the words of the chartwriter, was the fate of 3-year-old Evolutionary in the 3rd race: “fell while suffering a catastrophic injury near the far turn and was subsequently euthanized.” To my surprise, the replay for this race is still up on the Parx website; reverting to industry form, however, the fall/kill has been edited out.
(Several other horses were “vanned off” U.S. tracks yesterday; surely, the death toll on Preakness Day will grow higher.)
Also: The NYS Gaming Commission says this about Certified Conway at Vernon Friday: “participating in the 2nd, died during quilifications [sic].” She, too, was three years old.
Patrick, I don’t know if this is important to your stats. On April 6 the Wood Memorial was run. Deposition fell so horrendously,no one thought he’d make it back to his barn. Yesterday,he ran in Race 10 horse #1 at Pimlico. He came in last. This is 6 weeks after he was probably traumatized from his last race. Just FYI.
Thank you, Nancy.
What is NY Gaming Commission plan. Where is PETA. More hands on needed on both. These deaths are not rare but same ole day after day. Sickening.
I think the New York State Gaming Commission plan is to continue to do the same thing they’ve been doing all along; and that is too oversee the everyday and routine abuse and neglect, crippling and maiming and subsequent killing of horses for racing and wagering as Business As Usual, and continue to lobby for government support.
In an email message from PETA, I read that they are focused on bringing attention to and stopping the heinous cruelty to young and underdeveloped colts and fillies at the Ocala Breeders’ Sales and the Keeneland Breeders’ Sales in the form of “under tack shows” where fillies and colts are forced to gallop at TOP SPEED under saddle carrying the weight of a WHIP-WIELDING RIDER. These “under tack shows” are not under the jurisdiction of any state racing board or commission AND it was reported that the jockeys refer to these “under tack shows” as SUICIDE races. These colts and fillies are way too young to be exploited this way without dire consequences. There are videos of this type of carnage of young Thoroughbreds. It is absolutely despicable what this industry does to horses.
I think death probably visits Parx EVERY day — we just don’t learn about most of it unless/until FoIA requests are honored by the (highly honorable, haha) PA racing commissioners.
And, as sickening as it was, this particular Parx Death Race was a prime example of some bettors’ (I said SOME, not all, Joe;) lack of empathy, compassion, concern and plain, old humanity while they’re playing their favorite horse-mangling game. I’ll explain.
A Parx fan who regularly posts publicly on X shared his personal video of this race. In it, the “crowd” (sounds like about 15 people; not exactly standing room only) can be heard cheering for the THREE remaining runners after poor Evolutionary crashed to his death.
Never mind that Evolutionary’s fall was partially hidden by foliage. He clearly went down, and there was zero indication he was “okay.” And never mind that his human jockey went right down with him, and could have easily been paralyzed, or worse, as far as they knew. (Evolutionary had been the FAVORITE, so at least a few thought they had some real money comin’ their way.) Thus the ugly yelling. In front of kids, no less.
Kelly, I agree with you about PARX most likely killing more horses than are being reported. I wonder if the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority are giving them some “assistance” in how to cover up their carnage at PARX.
After all, if “integrity” means “not letting anything spill out of their vessel” so to speak, then they wouldn’t want this damning information to get out to the public (meaning a public that has some sense of morality and finds it vile and repulsive to profit from this carnage).
No doubt whatsoever HISA is helping Parx — and all the other “Safety-Certified” horse-killing tracks they’re paid to promote, er… I mean, “regulate” — with their high-integrity Carnage Cover-Ups. (I’d guess that’s HISA’s top priority, right up there with highlighting the horse kills at non-HISA tracks.)
Would synthetic surfaces help in this matter.
It seems there are no incidents recorded here or Europe.
Actually, Jack, there are plenty of kills on synthetic surfaces – see our tallies for Golden Gate and Turfway.
And Presque Isle. And Gulfstream’s new synthetic track. I was always taught that synthetic tracks produce more soft tissue injuries. A former horse of mine broke both front legs at Turway. Europe and UK run mostly on dirt and turf, there aren’t any synthetic tracks that I know of, but I admit I didn’t look too far into it. They have a huge number of breakdowns also- see a horrific one that Patrick posted from a few days ago from the UK on the turf. No surface is safe.
Whoever manufactures and installs synthetic surfaces stands to make a profit. It’s a no-brainer that anybody standing to make a financial profit from synthetic surfaces would say that they’re “safe” even though horses are still being injured on any and all surfaces because forcing young and underdeveloped colts and fillies to gallop carrying the weight of whip-wielding riders is FUNDAMENTALLY cruel and abusive, therefore not safe.
When starting gates were invented, they were said to be the “greatest” invention.
Many horses have been injured and killed because of the fact that starting gates are bad for horses. But it’s a no-brainer that someone then and now makes money from the manufacturing and selling of the dastardly starting gates.