4-year-old Ego Friendly – trainer Patrick Quick, breeders Chester and Mary Broman – collapsed and died while galloping at Belmont yesterday morning. The gelding’s last four races: three second-to-last, one DNF. Ego Friendly is the ninth racehorse to simply collapse and die on a NYRA track since March – Itsagoodtendollars (3/15), See the Music (5/21), Unnamed Dam (6/4), Missy Zelliott (7/20), Lavender Road (7/30), Sir William Bruce (8/2), Regretless (8/11), M B and Tee (8/21). The kill list includes four 3-year-olds, two 4-year-olds, and a 2-year-old. This is horseracing.
In what other “sport” would this number of child-athlete deaths be acceptable? Collapsing in death at the age of four…where else but in the “sport” of horseracing. Barbaric. RIP Ego Friendly.
That is not how Lavender Road died. He was euthanized the following day.
Lavender Road did collapse – repeatedly. My original post:
3-year-old Lavender Road, whom I wrote about this morning, was euthanized today after repeatedly falling at Saratoga yesterday afternoon. The official cause was a broken neck – from, of course, the repeated falls. The larger question, though, is why this apparently healthy 3-year-old – an equine child, really – collapsed in the first place. Heatstroke? Perhaps, but yesterday was a comfortable, low-humidity day in Saratoga.
LR was a filly.